As part of a settlement reached this week, the U.S. Department of Education will be required to make student loan information more accessible to blind students and order the companies it hires to collect loan payments to do the same.
The department agreed to make all websites, forms, and documents related to federal student loans accessible to blind students by, for instance, providing Braille copies and meeting universal web accessibility standards.
Department officials also agreed to instruct the student loan servicers it hires to make their websites accessible to blind borrowers, and provide notices and written communications to borrowers in accessible formats. The largest federal loan servicers include Nelnet, Great Lakes, FedLoan Servicing, and Navient, which is the loan servicing business that spun off from Sallie Mae earlier this year.
The agreement, signed Tuesday, stems from an administrative complaint filed in 2011 by a student borrower whose loan servicer, unnamed in the settlement, initially denied his request for a copy of his loan statement in Braille and assistance over the phone with filling out a change of payment form.
Read more at Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/10/09/us-department-education-make-student-loan-information-accessible-blind-borrowers