Law Office of Lainey Feingold
Disability Rights Legal Advocacy

Continuing its collaboration with the American Council of the Blind first announced in 2011, the American Cancer Society is making additional documents available in Braille and Large Print. The American Cancer Society is also continuing to provide a website that satisfies WCAG 2.0 Level AA Success Criteria. And, in addition to its accessible website and Braille and Large Print information, all American Cancer Society publications and brochures three pages or longer are available in Audio CD, Audio MP3 and electronic format sent as an email attachment or mailed on a disc. Brochures with fewer than 3 pages are available in electronic formats.

In 2011 the American Cancer Society (ACS) and the American Council of the Blind reached a comprehensive agreement regarding ACS information to members of the public with visual impairments. ACS agreed at that time that its website would satisfy WCAG 2.0 Level AA and that it would provide certain ACS information in Braille, Audio, Large Print and electronic formats. In early 2012 the parties agreed to extend the agreement and provide additional materials in Braille and Large Print. The Agreement extension is below.

On March 15, 2012, federal regulations with detailed Talking ATM requirements will finally be mandatory. The Talking ATM standards come at the end of a long (and continuing) road of grass-roots and legal advocacy in the U.S. and around the globe. March 15, 2012 is more than twelve years after the first Talking ATM was installed in the United States. Tens of thousands of ATMs now talk, but still too many do not.

Lainey Feingold will be presenting two times at the 27th Annual International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference in San Diego in late February - early March, 2012. Commonly referred to as CSUN, the abbreviation for conference sponsor California State University Northridge, the conference is the largest conference of its kind on technology and people with disabilities.

Today’s Talking ATM Google Alert brought news of the first Talking ATM in Brunei, a sovereign state located on the north coast of the island of Borneo, in Southeast Asia. The country’s official name is Brunei Darussalam, meaning Nation of Brunei, the Abode of Peace.

The news came via a blog post, reprinted here, by Lim Sheng Ming. The blog post was based on an article, reprinted in full here, that was published in the Borneo Bulletin and reprinted on the Brunei Direct website. As the article mentions, Brunei is getting its Talking ATMs after Standard Chartered Bank successfully launched them in Korea, China, India and Indonesia. Visit the International Issues category of this website for other posts about ATM installations outside the United States. The ATM industry is global, and advocacy must be too.

Alert: January 9, 2012 is the deadline to submit comments on the United States Department of Transportation’s pending airline web accessibility and kiosk regulations. In my earlier post about the positive and negative parts of the proposed regulations, I explained how comments could be filed on the “user-friendly” website called the Regulation Room. I recently discovered, however, that comments to the Regulation Room, while shared with the DOT, are not treated the same way by the DOT as comments submitted through the “official” Regulation.gov channel. And, because the official channel is not fully accessible, the federal government has an “optional submission form” that is more accessible. Optional? I thought federal government accessibility was mandatory?