Law Office of Lainey Feingold
Disability Rights Legal Advocacy

On January 13, 2010, Court Room 2 of the federal court of appeals in San Francisco was packed with people with visual and hearing impairments. The public was there to listen to oral argument about whether a lawsuit can be filed against a movie theater that refuses to provide captioning or audio description for movie-goers with disabilities. The three appellate judges hearing the case demonstrated a keen interest in the issue and grilled the lawyer for the Harkins movie chain about why his company didn’t just “do the right thing”

Lainey Feingold will be speaking about Structured Negotiations at two conferences this Spring. For the fifth time, Lainey will be speaking in March at the annual International Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference (CSUN) when it moves to San Diego. She will also present on Structured Negotiations at the National Disability Rights Network (NDRN) Annual Protection and Advocacy Conference this June.

Effective January 1, 2010, tactile keypads are required at every check-out location in California with a flat screen point of sale device. The keypads must be permanently attached.

Web more accessible to those with disabilities

(article appearing on page 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle on January 1, 2010, by staff writer Alejandro Martínez-Cabrera)

San Francisco, CA (January 1, 2010)– During her high school years, Lisamaria Martinez, who has been visually impaired since she was 5, carried a 25-pound backpack to school crammed with books written in Braille.

But once she was introduced to the Web at UC Berkeley, she started getting professors’ class notes by e-mail, using text-to-speech software, and trading heavy Braille tomes for a few words and a click on a search engine.

On January 13, 2010, the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco will hear oral argument in an important case regarding the rights of movie-goers with visual and hearing impairments. The appeal challenges a 2008 District Court decision out of Arizona holding that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) does not require theaters to install descriptive video equipment. The Law Office of Lainey Feingold and co-counsel Linda Dardarian filed an Amicus Brief explaining that the court’s decision should be reversed.

The Law Office of Lainey Feingold is pleased to announce that The Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse is now posting settlement agreements reached using Structured Negotiations. The Clearinghouse web site is a collection of documents and information about civil rights cases from across the United States organized in selected case categories. Its goal is to allow “greater understanding” of the importance of civil rights litigation in this country.