Law Office of Lainey Feingold
Disability Rights Legal Advocacy

As regular readers of LFLegal know, Major League Baseball (MLB) has shown great commitment to web site accessibility throughout the 2010 season. As the World Series begins this week, the American Council of the Blind (ACB) and its affiliates in Massachusetts and California continue to work with MLB on the accessibility of mlb.com and the team sites. The feedback of baseball fans with visual impairments is essential to that effort.

The 2010 baseball season has started and with it come accessibility improvements to mlb.com. Yes, there will no doubt be glitches and outstanding issues as the season gets underway. We are confident that MLB wants to and will continue to make improvements, and we encourage fans with visual impairments to send specific feedback to MLB through the channels listed in this post.

In this post you can find information about the 2010 MLB media players and the new on-line accessibility resources on mlb.com. You can also find information on how to contact MLB about accessibility issues.

This is a pre-opening day update about accessibility improvements to mlb.com and the 2010 audio and video players. This information will be updated on this site and on Brian Charlson’s website.

MLB has been working very hard to ensure that this year’s video and audio players are accessible, and the ACB MLB accessibility group has been working closely with them in this effort. One thing we have learned in the process is that changes to the whole site — not just accessibility — are being made up to the very last moment.

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.