The Department of Education has not provided an estimate. But the real stumbling block to making adaptive technology more widely available is not cost, say advocates for the disabled. It is a university's attitude and organization. On some campuses, Mr. Coombs says, departments get mired in squabbles over which of them will pick up the tab. If top administrators are committed to the needs of disabled students, he observes, the cost can be spread out across several departments or the whole university budget.
Some advocates say having a collegewide policy on adaptive technology is the key.
Because of a lack of coordination among campus Web designers, though, it is common to see only a smattering of accessible Web sites within a university, says Jane Jarrow, president of Disability Access Information and Support, a consulting company in Columbus, Ohio, that focuses on accessibility issues. California decided to hire a person on each of its 108 community-college campuses to respond to the recommendations of the Department of Education. The civil-rights office had noted, among other things, that many of the colleges did not have effective procedures for providing students with documents in Braille or large print. Ms. Jarrow tells colleges to design Web sites that are accessible from the start. It's going to be nearly impossible to retrofit Web sites of that size to make sure they're accessible.