Inaccessible HR Portals and Blind Employees' Rights

On August 21, 2026, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced that Pearson Education, Inc. will pay $150,000 and accept a three-year consent decree to settle a disability discrimination lawsuit. The agency alleged that the company’s online platforms for benefits, leave and training were not usable by employees with visual impairments.

Pearson settled. No court found the company liable. The allegations still deserve a close reading, because the same complaint arrives at our disability discrimination practice from New York employees whose benefits, leave and training have moved onto software nobody tested with a screen reader. Take a claims examiner at an insurance office in Melville who is blind and uses the JAWS screen reader. Her employer moved open enrollment onto a portal whose plan-selection buttons are unlabeled, and the window closes in two weeks.

What the EEOC alleged against Pearson

According to the lawsuit, Pearson “required employees to use online platforms to access information about their benefits, leave and training, but failed to make these platforms, replete with technical issues, accessible to employees with visual impairments.” The agency also alleged that Pearson did not give employees who use screen-reading software the reasonable accommodations that would have put their access to the platforms and trainings “on par with non-visually impaired employees.”

The EEOC filed suit in federal court in New Jersey after conciliation failed. Under the consent decree, Pearson must have a web accessibility consultant audit the benefit platforms and training modules and fix them for employees with vision-related impairments, train its human resources personnel annually on web accessibility and accommodations, report to the EEOC, and post a workplace notice of the settlement and of employees’ rights under federal law.

Kimberly A. Cruz, regional attorney for the EEOC’s New York District, which covers New York and northern New Jersey, said that equal access to benefits and training for blind and visually impaired employees “is not optional” and called it “a fundamental obligation under federal law, absent undue hardship.” Quote that line in your request.

What the employer owes a screen-reader user

Title I of the ADA reaches “employee compensation, job training, and other terms, conditions, and privileges of employment,” and it defines discrimination to include not making reasonable accommodations to the known limitations of a qualified employee unless the employer can demonstrate undue hardship (42 U.S.C. § 12112(a), (b)(5)(A)). The federal duty reaches employers of 15 or more; the State Human Rights Law reaches all employers within the state and makes it an unlawful discriminatory practice to refuse to provide reasonable accommodations to an employee’s known disabilities, in the job or in a training program (Executive Law § 296(3)(a)). The statute names the training program. No inference is needed.

Here is what that means. The benefits portal is how you choose health coverage; the learning platform is how you complete the training your job requires. When those systems do not work with a screen reader, you are not receiving the same terms, conditions and privileges as everyone else; therefore, the employer owes an accommodation that closes the gap unless it can demonstrate undue hardship.

The Melville examiner works outside the City, so her claims are the federal and State ones. Our post on remote work as a disability accommodation applies the same State rule to a different request; the card below sets the three laws side by side.

Inside the five boroughs the City law adds a duty the other two state more softly. The EEOC regulation says an interactive process “may be necessary”; the City makes the conversation mandatory and requires a written final determination when it ends (N.Y.C. Admin. Code § 8-107(28)(a)(2), (d)). Consequently, in a City workplace, an employer that does not answer a screen-reader request within a reasonable time has already committed a violation, before anyone argues about what the portal can or cannot do.

The answers employers give

The reply is usually one of the three below, and none of them ends the duty.

”We bought it from a national vendor and cannot change it”

The ADA anticipated the vendor. Discrimination includes participating in a contractual arrangement “that has the effect of subjecting” a disabled employee to discrimination, and the statute’s own examples are organizations providing fringe benefits and training (42 U.S.C. § 12112(b)(2)). It also includes “methods of administration that have the effect of discrimination on the basis of disability.” In my view a mandatory portal is a method of administration in the ordinary sense of those words. If the vendor will not fix the platform, the employer still owes equal access by another path: a private telephone or email enrollment, accessible documents, or a different tool.

”We offered to have someone help”

A qualified reader is on the federal list and “support services for persons with impaired hearing or vision” on the State list; assistance can be the accommodation. Whether it is a reasonable one turns on facts I ask about every time: whether the person is available when the deadline runs and has authority to complete the transaction, and whether the arrangement is private, because benefits elections and leave requests carry medical and family information. An employer that answers “ask a coworker to read you the screen” has not considered any of those questions.

”Other blind employees manage”

Whether a platform works with a screen reader is a question of fact; a recording of what the screen reader announces shows the barrier without an expert.

The written technical standard does not come from Title I; the Department of Justice adopted WCAG 2.1 Level A and AA for state and local governments on the dates in the table’s note, and no Title I regulation names one for private employers, whose case is proved by the barrier and the refusal. Ask for WCAG 2.1 Level AA conformance anyway. It gives the employer a fix it can measure.

The table lists what I ask for, system by system.

Name the row that matches your system; a request that names the fix leaves the employer nothing to misread.

How to make the request so it counts

Every statute above turns on what the employer knew. The ADA duty runs to “known” limitations, the State duty to “known disabilities,” and the City duty to a disability “known or should have been known.” A written request ends that argument. See also our guide to disability rights for workers.

Put it in writing and name the barrier

Send it to human resources, not only your manager, and keep a copy at home. The Melville examiner’s letter is one paragraph: “I am blind and use the JAWS screen reader. The benefits portal’s plan-selection buttons are unlabeled and the summary of benefits is an image-only PDF, so I cannot complete open enrollment independently. I am requesting a reasonable accommodation under the ADA and the New York State Human Rights Law: an accessible portal, or a private telephone enrollment with written confirmation, before open enrollment closes on the date in the notice.” Name the disability, the assistive technology, the task, the barrier and the date at risk. If other blind or low-vision colleagues hit the same walls, say so; the Pearson suit was brought over “employees with visual impairments,” plural.

Keep a dated record of each failure

Date, system, task, what the screen reader announced, what you could not finish, whom you told. A screen recording with the audio of the screen reader is the best evidence I know of, and it costs nothing. Keep the email chain somewhere other than the company’s systems.

Ask for an interim path and a date

A platform fix can take a long time. Your enrollment window does not move. Ask, in the same letter, for a private alternative now and for the date by which the employer will answer. In my judgment an employer that offers only the fix, on no date, has not accommodated the employee for this enrollment cycle. If the deadline is days away, talk to us before you send the request.

Retaliation after the request

The request is protected the moment it is made, and by more than one statute. Executive Law § 296(7)(iii) names the request itself: it is an unlawful discriminatory practice to retaliate against a person because that person “requested a reasonable accommodation under this article,” and the remedies are compensatory damages, punitive damages in cases against private employers and attorney’s fees. The City’s clause adds that the act need only be “reasonably likely to deter a person from engaging in protected activity.” A write-up or a reassignment that lands on the Melville examiner after her letter is the fact pattern these clauses were written for.

Retaliation claims are the heavy claims. The EEOC charge runs on the federal statute; the State claim is the bigger one, and since 2019 it has been worth quite a bit more. What goes for the employer goes for you: you have to watch what you say and you have to document better. In the personnel file, not in someone’s memory. Every reply from HR and every schedule change after your request goes into your own file the day it happens, with the date on it.

Two Labor Law statutes travel with the Human Rights Law claim and are pleaded alongside it, never instead of it. Labor Law § 215 forbids an employer to “discharge, threaten, penalize, or in any other manner discriminate or retaliate against any employee” for a reasonable, good-faith complaint about conduct the employee believes violates the Labor Law, or for using a legally protected absence. Labor Law § 740 carries the jury trial and the punitive damages; it reaches an employer of one or more employees and protects a disclosure to a supervisor of a practice the employee reasonably believes violates any law, rule or regulation, and the written request to human resources is that disclosure. Public employees have Civil Service Law § 75-b instead. The card lists what each one pays.

Our employer retaliation page covers the proof, and our post on attendance points for disability-related absences shows the pattern on paper. In my experience the retaliation claim is often the stronger claim, because it turns on dates: the request, then the write-up or the reorganization that lands on the one employee who asked. Keep those dates.

The clocks

An internal process does not stop any of these. Count each one from the first refusal, not the last.

The Division deserves a caution, and the chart carries it: filing there alone can cost you the right to sue in court on the same facts, and suing first closes the Division. Do not file anywhere without advice.

What to bring to the first call

• Your written accommodation request and every reply, with dates.
• Your dated log of each failure and any screen recordings.
• The deadline you missed or are about to miss, and any penalty notice.
• Any review, schedule change or reassignment dated after the request.
• The name of the platform and, if you know it, the vendor.

Sources

• EEOC, Pearson Education to Pay $150,000 in EEOC Disability Discrimination Suit (Aug. 21, 2026): https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/pearson-education-pay-150000-eeoc-disability-discrimination-suit
• 42 U.S.C. § 12111 (definitions): https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/12111
• 42 U.S.C. § 12112 (discrimination): https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/12112
• 42 U.S.C. § 12117 (enforcement): https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/12117
• 42 U.S.C. § 12203 (retaliation and coercion): https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/12203
• 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5 (charge deadline): https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/2000e-5
• 29 C.F.R. § 1630.2 (definitions): https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/29/1630.2
• 29 C.F.R. § 1630.9 (not making reasonable accommodation): https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/29/1630.9
• 28 C.F.R. § 35.200 (web and mobile accessibility, state and local governments): https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/28/35.200
• New York Executive Law § 292: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/EXC/292
• New York Executive Law § 296: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/EXC/296
• New York Executive Law § 297: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/EXC/297
• New York Executive Law § 300: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/EXC/300
• New York Labor Law § 215: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/LAB/215
• New York Labor Law § 740: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/LAB/740
• New York Civil Service Law § 75-b: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/CVS/75-B
• CPLR 214: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/CVP/214
• New York City Human Rights Law, Administrative Code title 8, chapter 1 (§§ 8-102, 8-107, 8-109): https://www.nyc.gov/site/cchr/law/chapter-1.page
• New York City Human Rights Law, Administrative Code title 8, chapter 5 (§ 8-502): https://www.nyc.gov/site/cchr/law/chapter-5.page

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The Melville examiner’s case is not in the portal’s code. It is in her letter, in the reply that did or did not come, and in the calendar that started running the day she was refused. Her employer put benefits, leave and training behind a login; that decision came with a duty to make the login usable by every employee. An EEOC charge is where the Pearson matter started, and the State claim reaches her employer whatever its size. Put the request in writing and calendar 300 days from the first refusal.

If your employer’s benefits, leave or training platform does not work with your screen reader, call (516) 750-0595 with your written accommodation request in hand, or request a free case review.