Law Office of Lainey Feingold
Disability Rights Legal Advocacy

Since its early commitment to Talking ATMs and web accessibility in 2000, Bank of America has had a leadership role in providing accessible services to customers who are blind and visually impaired. Posted here is the Bank’s most recent settlement agreement with the blind community, addressing the accessibility of security features on the bank website and mobile iOS applications Bank of America worked on this initiative in Structured Negotiations with the Bay State Council of the Blind and bank customers Carl Richardson of Massachusetts and Shen Kuan of California. They were represented by the Law Office of Lainey Feingold and Linda Dardarian, of the Oakland, California civil rights firm Goldstein, Borgen, Dardarian & Ho.

An important component of any Structured Negotiations settlement agreement involving web accessibility is a company’s commitment to maintain an Accessibility Information Page, or AIP. The ideal page has details about the company’s web accessibility policy, details about other accessibility services, and a phone and web-based method for the public to forward accessibility concerns, both positive and negative. The page should be easy to find on the site, preferably linked from the home page and all page footers, and searchable through the site search engine. Pages of some of the largest entities in the United States are included in this post.

In the Spring of 2013, Lainey Feingold will be presenting at both the CSUN International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference, and Knowbility’s John Slatin AccessU, two of the country’s most well-regarded disability technology conferences. Read about her presentations in this post.

Those who believe that web content should be available to everyone regardless of disability received welcomed news on Tuesday, June 19. On that day, a federal district court judge in Massachusetts held that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) applies to web-only businesses. The ruling came in a case brought by the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) against Netflix for the streaming video giant’s faiure to provide closed captioning on most of its “Watch Instantly” programming streamed on the Internet.

Netflix had tried to get the case thrown out of court, arguing that the ADA only applies to physical places, and not to a web-only operation like Netflix’ streaming video service. The Judge rejected this argument, and the case will now move forward. The U.S. Department of Justice also played a significant role by entering the case in support of the plaintiffs’ position.

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.

Posted here is the settlement agreement between Charles Schwab and one of its blind customers about website accessibility. Schwab engaged in the Structured Negotiations process with the Law Office of Lainey Feingold and has made a significant commitment to ensuring that its website is inclusive for all customers. Schwab has begun making site enhancements and will continue doing so. The company has adopted WCAG 2.0 Level AA as its web accessibility standard.