Section 504 Manual: Fill & Download for Free

I need more details, including what country you are in. If you are going to college in the US, then the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) applies to you. I’m not a lawyer, and I’m not an ADA specialist, I’m on the digital accessibility side.In my opinion, you should look at the ADA Title II - 3.2 Denial of Participation[1] . Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 states that colleges and universities that receive government grants or funding (almost all of them) cannot deny participation to students with disabilities. The US Department of Justice regularly monitors universities for compliance. That may change with a new government, but if it is happening to you, move fast while Obama is still in office.That said, if someone does not have control of their service dog, there could be a case for the dog being a danger to others. That COULD override the student’s right to equal Participation. If this is you or a good friend, message me privately and I can give you a referral to a good lawyer who defends people with disabilities.Footnotes[1] Title II Technical Assistance Manual

This is a difficult question to answer for several reasons. One of them is that word “ever”. It is impossible to prove that no teacher ever did something. Another big problem is that teachers are not usually qualified to diagnose a mental disorder. However, psychologists are able to diagnose some mental disorders, and there are some psychologists who work for schools. Another problem is that hyperactivity is a symptom of a mental disorder called Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.What a team of teachers and parents and other school staff (in the USA) can do is determine that a student is eligible for special education or Section 504 protection under a category called something like Other Health Disability. Depending on state laws and local procedure, they may not need an actual diagnosis from a doctor or psychologist for that. But I have also known families that took their child to their own doctor, got a prescription for ADHD medication, the disability was never part of the student’s school record, and most of the student’s teachers never knew the kid had a disability.Now, do these school teams and psychologists sometimes get it wrong? That definitely happens. Sometimes a diagnosis changes big time between elementary school and middle school.Do these diagnoses get attached to kids from some cultures more than others? Absolutely. In my own experience, kids in cultures and families that value physical activity (sports, dancing, hunting, manual labor) sometimes have difficulty sitting for 6 hours in a day and get that ADHD label more than they should. So do young boys whose birthdays are in the last couple of months before the local cutoff date for kindergarten.There is a huge debate smoldering in education that is related to your question. A child who has it tough at home— for any number of reasons—may struggle in school. This child does not have a disability. This child is having normal human reactions to situations no child should have to deal with. But there is no special funding for kids whose lives just suck—like there is for students who have disabilities. It can be difficult to tell if the child belongs to one group or the other. But some teachers and parents, maybe even some school psychologists, somewhere, would probably lie to get that kid the help the kid needs and deserves.

US perspective:Yes, the copyright to a not-yet-extant can be assigned. This happens routinely, for example, in independent contractor agreements.Just imagine the chaos that would prevail if copyrights could not be assigned until a work existed. Every time a contractor wrote another computer program or drew another illustration or prepared another training manual, a new, separate copyright assignment would have to be executed!Accordingly, I must disagree with some of the points that Cliff Gilley made in his answer, most notably:1. "Under US law, a work must be in existence for the copyright on that work to be assigned to someone else...." Not so. A copyright assignment must be in writing, but there is not requirement that the work be in existence. 17 U.S. Code § 204 - Execution of transfers of copyright ownership states, in relevant part:(a) A transfer of copyright ownership, other than by operation of law, is not valid unless an instrument of conveyance, or a note or memorandum of the transfer, is in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed or such owner’s duly authorized agent.2. "Further, work-for-hire agreements are not prior assignments, they are a contractual agreement that any work performed under the contract are considered by law to be "work-for-hire" and as such the copyright vests in the employer or contracting party, rather than in the author or creator." Minor point: The commonly-used term "work-for-hire" is incorrect; the proper term, under copyright law, is "work made for hire" ("WMFH"). Major point: The quoted sentence is incorrect concerning alleged generalized WMFH treatment for the works of independent contractors.WMFH confusion is so rampant that five years ago I wrote a blog post on this topic. Quoting from Work Made for Hire - a Term Made for Confusion:People who have some knowledge of WMFH typically believe that it means the transfer of all rights in a work from the creator to a purchaser. So, for example, if an independent contractor writes software for a company, then according to this belief, the company will own all rights to the software if the parties’ contract says the software is a work made for hire. This belief is wrong! The following is an explanation of what work made for hire really means under copyright law and how parties actually can arrange for transfer of all rights in a work.Statutory ProvisionsTitle 17, Section 102(a) of the United States Code states: “Copyright protection subsists…in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression….” Copyrightable works include, among others, literary, musical, dramatic and audiovisual works.Subject to certain limitations, the owner of a copyright has a set of exclusive rights, such as the rights to make and distribute copies and to prepare derivative works (17 U.S.C. Section 106). If someone infringes any of the exclusive rights, the copyright owner may seek remedies that include injunctions (17 U.S.C. Section 502), recovery of actual damages and additional profits of the infringer or, alternatively, statutory damages (17 U.S.C. Section 504), and recovery of litigation costs and attorney’s fees (17 U.S.C. Section 505). These rights and remedies are quite powerful. Accordingly, anyone who pays for a work has a strong incentive to own the copyright.According to 17 U.S.C. Section 201(a), “[c]opyright of a work…vests initially in the author….” Section 201(b) provides, however, that “[i]n the case of a work made for hire, the employer or other person for whom the work was prepared is considered the author….” “Work made of hire” means, most commonly, “a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment” (17 U.S.C. Section 101). There is, however, a second class of specifically enumerated types of works (such as translations, instructional texts, and works specially commissioned as contributions to collective works) that also qualify as WMFH if a signed contract so states.Business ImplicationsTaking these provisions together, we see the following with respect to WMFH.An employer automatically owns the copyright to a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment.A company that hires an independent contractor to prepare a work will own the copyright to that work only if (a) there is a signed agreement that says the work is a work made for hire and (b) the work falls into one of the enumerated types.For any business that wants to own all rights in a work, there are two significant limitations in relying on WMFH status.For most works prepared by independent contractors, WMFH treatment is not available because the work is not of one of the enumerated types.Even if the work is a WMFH, that status has no bearing on rights other than copyright, such as those pertaining to patents.Consequently, prudent businesses often include in agreements with employees and independent contractors both WMFH language and a provision that explicitly assigns all rights to the work.