Law Office of Lainey Feingold
Disability Rights Legal Advocacy

Two years ago today, on March 10, 2008, I launched this website, LFLegal.com. Back then, I had never heard of an anchor that wasn’t on a boat, and didn’t know an ordered list from a market list. But Mike Cherim built me an accessible web site and taught me how to use it. Today, even though most people I know have sites far older than mine, I’m happy to be celebrating the beginning of LFLegal’s third year.

After much internal soul searching, I have reluctantly decided to cancel my presentation at the 25th Annual International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference, widely known as ‘CSUN’. Why? I recently learned of the national gay rights and labor boycott of the Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel, the site of this year’s conference. This is CSUN’s first year in San Diego, and I hope that next year this wonderful conference can find a home in a hotel that does not run afoul of basic human rights principles.

Blind Sox Fan Gets MLB to Even Game

Like any true Red Sox fan, Brian Charlson attends as many games as possible and listens to the rest, play by play, on the radio. But when it came to reading stats, his blindness sometimes got in the way. Not any longer. At the urging of Charlson and fellow advocates, Major League Baseball rolled out a series of accessibility features this week on all league and team websites aimed at making statistics, ticketing, and other information fully accessible to the visually impaired.

“It’s exciting that MLB has joined with us in this effort, hearing what the blindness community needs to take full advantage of this wonderful thing that is baseball. They are setting the stage for other sports to do likewise. Next season I’ll be asking the NFL, and I’ll say, ‘See what MLB can do? You don’t want to be outshined by the MLB.’”

FANS WITH VISUAL IMPAIRMENTS GAIN ENHANCED ACCESS TO MLB.COM

New York (February 11, 2010)– Baseball fans with visual impairments will benefit from the implementation of functional improvements to MLB.com, the official Web site of Major League Baseball, and all 30 individual Club sites as a result of a joint collaboration between Major League Baseball Advanced Media, LP (MLBAM), the American Council of the Blind, Bay State Council of the Blind and California Council of the Blind. All three organizations applaud this fan initiative taken by MLBAM.

This post contains the Settlement Agreement between the digital arm of Major League Baseball (MLBAM) and the American Council of the Blind, the Bay State Council of the Blind, and the California Council of the Blind. MLB collaborated with these organizations in the Structured Negotiations process to reach this historic agreement, which addresses not only the accessibility of mlb.com, but also the accessibility of every baseball club in the major league. Lainey Feingold and Linda Dardarian were the lawyers for the blind organizations.

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”