What does the policy guidance do?

The policy guidance does the following:

• Reiterates the principles of Title VI with respect to LEP persons
• Discusses the reasonable policies, procedures and other steps that recipients can take to ensure meaningful access to their program by LEP persons
• Provides four factors recipients should use to assess whether they are taking reasonable steps to provide meaningful access to their programs by persons with LEP: (1) the number or proportion of LEP persons eligible to be served or likely to be encountered by the program, activity or service provided by the recipient; (2) the frequency with which LEP individuals come in contact with the recipient's program, activity or service; (3) the nature and importance of the recipient's program, activity, or service; and (4) the resources available to the recipient and costs
• Clarifies that these four factors should be applied in balance to the unique circumstances of a recipient's program, which means some programs with limited resources may provide different language assistance services than recipients with greater resources
• Provides that OCR will offer extensive technical assistance for recipients