|
Limited English Proficiency
Most individuals living in the United States read, write, speak, and understand English. There are many individuals, however, for whom English is not their primary language. The 2000 census shows that 26 million individuals speak Spanish and almost 7 million individuals speak an Asian or Pacific Island language at home. If these individuals have a limited ability to read, write, speak, or understand English, they are limited English proficient, or “LEP.”
In a 2001 Supplementary Survey by the U.S.
Census Bureau, 33% of Spanish speakers and 22.4%
of all Asian and Pacific Island language
speakers aged 18–64 reported that they spoke
English either “not well” or “not at all.”
Language for LEP individuals can be a barrier to
accessing important benefits or services,
understanding and exercising important rights,
complying with applicable responsibilities, or
understanding other information provided by
federally funded programs and activities. The
Federal Government funds an array of services
that can be made meaningfully accessible to
otherwise eligible LEP persons. The Federal
Government is committed to improving the
accessibility of these programs and activities
to eligible LEP persons, a goal that reinforces
its equally important commitment to promoting
programs and activities designed to help
individuals learn English.
TABLE OF CONTENTS]
Title VI and Executive Order 13166
In certain circumstances, a failure to
ensure that LEP persons can effectively
participate in or benefit from federally
assisted programs and activities may violate
the prohibition against national origin
discrimination under
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
(42 U.S.C. 2000d) and the U.S. Department of
Transportation’s (DOT) Title VI regulations
at
49 CFR Part 21.
To clarify existing requirements for LEP
persons under Title VI, on August 11, 2000,
President Clinton issued
Executive Order 13166, “Improving Access
to Services for Persons with Limited English
Proficiency.” The Executive Order requires
each Federal agency to examine the services
it provides and develop and implement a
system by which LEP persons can meaningfully
access those services consistent with, and
without unduly burdening, the fundamental
mission of the agency. Each Federal agency
is also directed to work to ensure that
recipients of Federal financial assistance
provide meaningful access to their LEP
applicants and beneficiaries. To this end,
each agency must prepare a plan to improve
access to its federally conducted programs
and activities (i.e., the services it
provides directly to the public) by eligible
LEP persons. The approximately 30 Federal
agencies, including DOT, that provide
Federal financial assistance to other
parties, such as states, must also develop
guidance for their recipients on complying
with LEP requirements.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is
responsible for coordinating governmentwide
implementation of the Executive Order. To
assist agencies in fulfilling the mandates
of the order, DOJ published a general LEP policy
guidance document on August 16, 2000, and
issued revised guidance on June 18, 2002. The
Executive Order states that agencies’ LEP
plans and guidance must be consistent with
the DOJ LEP guidance.
[TABLE OF CONTENTS]
DOT’s LEP Guidance
In accordance with the Executive Order, the
U.S. Department of Transportation issued
Policy Guidance Concerning Recipient's
Responsibilities to Limited English Proficient
(LEP) Persons, which is
modeled after DOJ’s guidance. As described in
the guidance, DOT recipients are required to
take reasonable steps to ensure meaningful
access to their programs and activities by LEP
persons. The guidance applies to all DOT funding
recipients, which include state departments of
transportation, state motor vehicle
administrations, airport operators, metropolitan
planning organizations, and regional, state, and
local transit operators, among many others.
Coverage extends to a recipient’s entire program
or activity, i.e., to all parts of a recipient’s
operations. This is true even if only one part
of the recipient receives the Federal
assistance. For example, if DOT provides
assistance to a state department of
transportation to rehabilitate a particular
highway on the National Highway System, all of
the operations of the entire state department of
transportation—not just the particular highway
program or project—are covered by the DOT
guidance.
The DOT guidance outlines four factors
recipients should apply to the various kinds of
contacts they have with the public to assess
language needs and decide what reasonable steps
they should take to ensure meaningful access for
LEP persons:
- The number or proportion of LEP persons eligible
to be served or likely to be encountered by a
program, activity, or service of the recipient
or grantee.
- The frequency with which LEP individuals come in
contact with the program.
- The nature and importance of the program,
activity, or service provided by the recipient
to people’s lives.
- The resources available to the recipient and
costs.
The greater the number or proportion of eligible
LEP persons; the greater the frequency with
which they have contact with a program,
activity, or service; and the greater the
importance of that program, activity, or
service, the more likely enhanced language
services will be needed. Smaller recipients with
more limited budgets are typically not expected
to provide the same level of language service as
larger recipients with larger budgets. The
intent of DOT’s guidance is to suggest a balance
that ensures meaningful access by LEP persons to
critical services while not imposing undue
burdens on small organizations and local
governments.
After completing the above four-factor analysis,
recipients can determine the appropriate “mix”
of LEP services required. Recipients have two
main ways to provide language services: oral
interpretation either in person or via telephone
interpretation service and written translation.
The correct mix should be based on what is both
necessary and reasonable in light of the
four-factor analysis. For instance, a motor
vehicle department or an emergency hazardous
material cleanup team in a largely Hispanic
neighborhood may need immediate oral
interpreters available and decide to hire
full-time bilingual staff. In contrast, there
may be circumstances where the importance and
nature of the activity and number or proportion
and frequency of contact with LEP persons may be
low and the costs and resources needed to
provide language services may be high in which
pre-arranged language services for the
particular service may not be necessary. The
languages spoken by the LEP individuals with
whom the recipient has frequent contact often
determine the languages into which documents
will be translated and the types of interpreters
provided.
More detail on the points discussed above and
information on other considerations are found in
the
DOT LEP guidance.
[TABLE OF CONTENTS]
Promising Practices Among DOT Funding Recipients
DOT recipients have provided a variety of
language access services, reflecting the
flexibility that recipients have in addressing
the needs of the LEP populations they serve.
Although DOT does not endorse a particular
approach and instead evaluates situations on a
case-by-case basis, the examples below show how
recipients have moved toward providing
meaningful access.
- The Iowa Department of Transportation provides a
Spanish version of the Commercial Driver’s
License knowledge test using a touch screen
computer, and study guides of the Iowa Driver’s
Manual in Albanian, Bosnian, Russian,
Vietnamese, and Korean. The department also
established a liaison with a local community
college to provide education for Bosnian
refugees concerning the Commercial Motor Vehicle
driving course.
- The New Jersey Department of Motor Vehicles
administers driver’s license tests in more than
15 languages, including Arabic, French, Greek,
Korean, Portuguese, and Turkish.
- New York City Transit MetroCard vending machines
are located in every station and contain
software that allows them to be programmed in
three languages in addition to English, based
upon area demographics. Currently, these
machines are capable of providing information in
Spanish, French, French Creole, Russian,
Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Korean, Greek, and
Polish.
- The Idaho Office of Traffic and Highway Safety
implemented a Spanish-language safety belt media
campaign to educate its Hispanic community on
the statewide “Click It, Don’t Risk It!” program
to boost seat belt use. Information appeared in
Unido, Idaho’s largest Spanish-language
newspaper, and advised all motorists to buckle
up.
- The Salt Lake City International Airport
maintains a list of 35 bilingual and
multilingual employees who speak one of 19
languages (including three dialects of Chinese)
and their contact information. The list is
published in the Airport Information Handbook
and provided to all airport employees. The
airport also contracts with a telephonic
interpretation service to provide on-demand
telephone interpretation services to
beneficiaries.
- In preparation of its 20-year planning document,
the Transportation Concept Report, the
California Department of Transportation held a
public meeting titled “Planning the Future of
Highway 1” in the largely Hispanic city of
Guadalupe, through which Highway 1 runs. The
meeting was broadcast on the local public access
channel since many of the Spanish-speaking
residents potentially affected by Highway 1
projects rely on the channel to receive public
affairs information. The department provided a
Spanish-language interpreter during the meeting
and also made its Spanish-speaking public
affairs officer available to meet with
participants individually.
[TABLE OF CONTENTS]
LEP Library
The LEP.gov
site, managed by the Department of Justice’s
Coordination and Review Section, acts as a
clearinghouse, providing and linking to
information, tools, and technical assistance
regarding limited English proficiency.
Executive Order 13166, Improving Access to
Services for Persons with Limited English
Proficiency
DOT Policy Guidance Concerning Recipients' Responsibilities to Limited English Proficient
(LEP) Persons (HTML
or
PDF)
[TABLE OF CONTENTS]
Contact Information
U.S. Department of Transportation
Departmental Office of Civil Rights
External Civil Rights Programs Division (S-33)
1200 New Jersey Ave, S.E.
Washington, DC 20590
Phone: (202) 366-4070 TTY: (202) 366-9696
Fax: (202) 366-5575
[TABLE OF CONTENTS]
|
