Some deaf federal employees at some agencies aren’t able to access American Sign Language interpreting services and other accommodations as a result of President Donald Trump’s orders to remove all positions related to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, according to advocates working with deaf federal employees and interpreters.

The White House has also not provided ASL interpretation at its news conferences or broadcasts, and there are no ASL interpretations on videos posted to its YouTube channel. The accessibility section of the White House website has also been taken down.

Legal experts said failure to provide interpreting services to deaf employees may be a violation of Section 501 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, a federal law that mandates the government to provide reasonable accommodations to its employees, and the Americans with Disability Act, which prohibits discrimination and mandates equal access to those with disabilities.

In the past, the failure to provide interpreters at White House briefings has been found to violate Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, which mandates that all White House programs and services are accessible.

A White House official said the administration did not fire any of its ASL interpreters and said that the website is still a work in progress. The White House did not provide comment on its lack of interpreting services for conferences, broadcasts and videos.

The National Association of the Deaf’s interim chief executive Bobbie Beth Scoggins sent a letter to the White House on Friday urgently requesting that it reinstate interpreting services for all news briefings and related events.

“Captioning does not serve the needs of the large population of Deaf individuals whose first and dominant language is ASL,” Scoggins wrote.

Concerns from the deaf community

Kevin Owen, a Washington-area employment lawyer who represents federal employees, said he is seeing an increasing number of accessibility and accommodation issues arise in multiple parts of the government, which is concerning.

“It appears to be emerging more as an attack on the deaf community,” Owen said.

For disabled workers who need job accommodations, it’s unclear exactly how many interpreting contracts and services have been impacted, and in which agencies, said S. Jordan Wright, director of communications for the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf, which represents over 14,000 interpreters nationwide.

“Things are up in the air right now,” Wright said. “We don’t know exactly what’s going on.”

Some in the deaf community are worried that disability rights laws may have gotten caught in the crossfire of Trump’s attacks on voluntary DEIA programs. In a video statement last week, Scoggins said that these changes “pose a serious threat” to deaf people across the country.

“A decline in support could lead to reduced accessibility in workplaces, education and public services,” Scoggins said in the statement. “If interpreters and other accommodations are viewed as expendable, it sets a dangerous precedent that undermines the rights and inclusion of deaf and hard of hearing individuals nationwide.”

She told The Washington Post that the NAD is prepared to “take whatever action is necessary” to ensure that federal employees can have the access needed to do their jobs. “We call on the administration to affirm quickly that they will follow all federal laws on accessibility,” Scoggins said.

The NAD sued the Trump administration in 2020 for failing to provide American Sign Language interpreters during White House news conferences and briefings, despite repeated requests from the NAD and members of Congress. Following the lawsuit, a federal judge ordered the White House to begin providing interpreters during its coronavirus briefings.

The current administration’s failure to provide interpreters marks a sharp departure from the Biden administration, which had, in a historical first, provided interpreters at all White House news briefings and employed a team of interpreters.

Howard Rosenblum, a Deaf attorney who was directly involved in the NAD’s 2020 lawsuit and is the founder and chair of the nonprofit legal organization Deaf Equality, said that if interpreters are not provided, it’s highly likely that lawsuits will be filed.

“The removal of interpreters from White House press briefings at this time shows disregard for federal law and the rights of people with disabilities,” Rosenblum said. Difficult to gauge impact

The federal government is one of the leading employers of disabled workers in the country; in 2023, 21 percent of the government’s workforce self-identified as having a disability or serious health condition, according to a report from the Partnership for Public Service.

This is partially because of the Rehabilitation Act, which prohibits disability discrimination in federal hiring practices, and U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regulations, which set a goal that government agencies should hire people with disabilities to make up at least 12 percent of their workforce and at least 2 percent should have a targeted disability such as deafness, Rosenblum said. (However, agencies are not penalized for failing to meet those goals, he added).

In some government agencies, accommodation services and DEI trainings are provided by the same offices, whereas other agencies keep the two separate, Owen said. As a result, some have placed interpreters and those who coordinate accommodation services on leave while others have not, he said.

Smaller agencies may be the first ones where accommodations services were affected, Owen said.

“If you’re a small agency, you may have the same person who did the annual DEI training and sexual harassment training also handling the accommodations services because they didn’t have the budget to separate them,” he explained.

At a meeting with deaf federal workers last week, the NAD encouraged them to document any inability to get interpreting accommodations and report it.

Federal employees must file complaints with their agency’s equal employment opportunity office. If unresolved, the claims may make their way to the EEOC, the federal agency tasked with handling workplace discrimination claims, or U.S. district court, Owen said.

Even if equal employment opportunity offices are short-staffed or there is no response, the process is set up in a way where employees still have the right to file complaints and eventually take them to court, Owen said.

West Resendes, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union’s Disability Rights Program, said if the government is failing to provide workers with accommodations such as interpreters, it might embolden private employees to skirt their legal responsibilities as well.

“When the federal government violates federal disability rights laws, it also sets a bad example for all employers,” Resendes said.