Law Office of Lainey Feingold
Disability Rights Legal Advocacy

May 9, 2012 marks the first Global Accessibility Awareness Day. On this day designed to raise awareness of the need for digital inclusion, the Law Office of Lainey Feingold recognizes the large United States institutions that have committed to accessibility through the Structured Negotiations process. The entities have worked with the blind community to improve accessibility to their websites and other technologies. They have recognized the importance of inclusion and have done so in a collaborative and solution-driven way.

As a lawyer who has represented the blind community for the past seventeen years, I feel a particular affinity for the story of Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese lawyer and human rights activist whose bravery has captivated news audiences the world over. Chen is being recognized across the globe for his courageous human rights work and his movie-quality escape from house arrest, Is he capturing media attention in part because he is blind? Maybe. While under any definition Chen would be a hero worth celebrating, Chen’s blindness is certainly part of what makes his story so compelling.

Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. today announced an initiative to make its website more accessible and inclusive for all customers. Schwab’s initiative will particularly improve the client experience for Schwab customers with disabilities. Schwab has adopted the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.0 level AA as its website accessibility standard and has begun working to meet this standard.

International Talking ATM installations remind us that advocacy work done in one country can have ripple affects across the globe. ATM manufactures distribute their technology around the world, and slowly, slowly this technology is becoming more accessible everywhere. Today’s news brought word of the first Talking ATMs in Semarang, Central Java and Surabaya in East Java, Indonesia. The full news report, which first appeared in the Jakarta Post, is reprinted below. Visit the International Issues Category of LFLegal for more stories of Talking ATM installations outside the United States.

On April 24, 2012, Consumer World, a consumer education organization based in Massachusetts, published the results of its survey on Talking ATM and talking fare machines in Boston. The results show that far too many ATMs and fare machines are still not accessible to people with visual impairments. One bank that is doing a good job? Bank of America, where every ATM tested was a working Talking ATM.

Lainey Feingold will be presenting at John Slatin AccessU 2012, to be held this year in Austin on May 15-17. AccessU, a project of Knowbility, is a two day intensive training conference for web developers and designers, usability professionals, and pretty much anyone who wants to learn the ins and outs of all aspects of web accessibility. Lainey will be doing a session for conference participants on legal issues surrounding web accessibility. Web accessibility is a civil right, and the law is a useful key to unlock doors that might otherwise be closed to accessibility. You’ll find out how and why at this session.