In a move that will impact how schools address the instruction of students who are handicapped, the Iowa Supreme Court just ruled that chiropractic college cannot reject a student’s request to meet requirements for analyzing X-rays through a reader.

Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Ed files this story:

The Iowa Supreme Court on Friday ruled 5 to 2 that a chiropractic college violated the rights of a blind student by denying him the use of a sighted reader to describe X-rays to him. The student, blind from birth, was unable to stay in the program when his request was rejected, and the Iowa court’s decision may represent a shift in how courts consider the issue of health professions students with certain disabilities.

The ideas in the decision, if embraced elsewhere, could lead to more options in health professions programs for students who are deaf or blind. The Iowa court found that a health professions college cannot simply assert that seeing an X-ray or patient is the only way a chiropractor or student could make a diagnosis. And the court ruled that it is relevant that there are blind medical doctors and medical students, suggesting that there are ways that blind students can meet academic requirements that in most cases may require vision.

The Iowa court also rejected the approach of the Ohio Supreme Court in 1996 ruling upholding the right of Case Western Reserve University to reject a blind applicant to its medical school.

And the Iowa court offered a new emphasis on a 1979 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld the right of Southeastern Community College, in North Carolina, to reject a deaf applicant to a nursing program. The Iowa court said some parts of the nursing case in fact suggest a higher bar than has been assumed for colleges to meet in denying accommodations to students with disabilities.

…While the Iowa ruling will likely be hailed by advocates for students with disabilities, the dissent in the case shows that many people (and judges) remain sympathetic to idea that health professions colleges should have the right to say that vision is a basic requirement. The dissent states that the opinion in the case “elevates political correctness over common sense.”

The dissent asks: “What is next? Are we going to require the Federal Aviation Administration to hire blind air traffic controllers, relying on assistants to tell them what is appearing on the screen?”

The ruling is about Aaron Cannon, who enrolled at Palmer College of Chiropractic, although he was warned that there might be some portions of his education that he could not complete due to his blindness. The decision says that Cannon believed he could work something out, and that he succeeded in much of the coursework required by the college.