Spring 2014 Conference Presentations

On This Page

This is a post about conferences Lainey Feingold will speak at in 2014.  Lainey will give a talk at the CSUN Conference in March.  She will be speaking with her work partner, Linda Dardarian. People with disabilities should be able to easily use websites and mobile applications.  The law can help.  The talk will cover lawsuits and government actions.  She will also review which companies are working with people with disabilities without lawsuits.  At a second session, Lainey will give a talk about how she and the disability community work with companies about access to find win-win solutions. Lainey is writing a book about this work.  Some of the results of her work include Talking ATMs, talking pill bottles, and accessible pedestrian signals.  She has also worked with companies and the blind community to make websites and mobile applications accessible.  Lainey will also speak in Austin Texas at the John Slatin AccessU conference.  That talk will also be about how the law can help make online content easier to use by everyone. Back to Post

This post contains information about Lainey Feingold’s 2014 presentations at CSUN (March, 2014 in San Diego, California) and at AccessU (May, 2014 in Austin, Texas). Lainey will also be speaking about Structured Negotiations at the 12th annual Impact Fund Class Action Conference in February.

You can read a Simplified Summary of this Document, a feature of LFLegal.com designed to meet WCAG Success Criteria 3.1.5 (a WCAG 2.0 AAA Reading Level requirement).

share on twitter


29th Annual CSUN Conference

annual itpwd conference logoLainey will be giving two presentations at the annual International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference to be held in San Digeo March 18-21, 2014. Commonly referred to as CSUN, the abbreviation for conference sponsor California State University Northridge, the conference draws thousands of participants annually and is the largest gathering of its kind. Lainey has been presenting at CSUN for many years.

Annual CSUN Legal Update

On Wednesday, March 19, Lainey and Linda Dardarian will be giving their annual behind-the-scenes insights into current law affecting web and mobile accessibility for people with disabilities. Titled “Digital Accessibility: Annual CSUN Legal Update,” the session will be held at 3:10 on the second floor of Seaport Tower. Read more information about the 2014 CSUN Legal Update session on the CSUN Conference website.

A standing room only audience attended last year’s legal update, and we are expecting the same this year. There’s lots to talk about. This month, a federal appeals court in California issued an opinion in a case about the obligation of media giant CNN to caption online video clips. Come find out what the court said and what’s next in that case. On the other side of the country, the United States Department of Justice has intervened in a lawsuit brought by the National Federation of the Blind against H & R Block for the tax company’s inaccessible digital content. What does that tell us about how the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Internet?

Other topics we’ll cover include

  • What’s happening with the pending lawsuit against the Marriott hotel chain challenging the company’s decision to purchase software that blind employees can’t use?
  • Which companies have worked in collaboration with the disability community in Structured Negotiations (without a lawsuit) in the past year to make their digital content usable by all?
  • What is the status of the (long-delayed) web accessibility regulations and Section 508 regulations and can we expect any developments in 2014?
  • What are the new regulations affecting airline websites and kiosks and what’s the status of the lawsuit challenging the timetable for kiosk access?

There’s lots more to discuss, and of course, there will be plenty of time for audience questions. Know your question in advance? Contact Lainey Feingold and let us know. Slides will be posted on SlideShare and the link added to this post after the conference.

Structured Negotiations: The Book!

In 1994, Linda Dardarian and Lainey Feingold began looking into whether the law could be used to convince financial institutions to develop and install Talking ATMs. Instead of filing a lawsuit, they decided to write letters to three banks and suggest that the institutions work in collaboration with the blind community to find a solution to inaccessible ATMs. The rest, as they say, is history. Those letters turned into the first Structured Negotiations settlement agreements — comprehensive agreements to improve access without contentious litigation.

There have now been close to fifty agreements negotiated without litigation improving the accessibility and usability of information and technology for people with disabilities. Walmart, Bank of America, CVS, Major League Baseball and dozens of other institutions have participated in the process. Now, Lainey Feingold is writing a book about the method, the improved technology, and the blind advocates and advocacy organizations who made it all possible. List with links of all negotiated agreements.

At CSUN on Friday morning, Lainey will be doing a session about Structured Negotiations and the book in progress. The CSUN conference itself played a role in the success of this alternative collaborative dispute resolution method. Did you use the very first Talking ATM brought to CSUN? Are you one of the hundreds of blind people across the country who has given feedback after cases were settled? Or are you just curious about Structured Negotiations and how it works? This will be an interactive session with lots of time for audience participation and questions. More information about this session is available on the Structured Negotiations Session page of the CSUN website.


John Slatin AccessU

got access buttonsLainey will be presenting at John Slatin AccessU in Austin Texas in May. This annual training conference is put on by the not-for-profit accessibility organization Knowbility. It is focused on the practical aspects of accessibility from technical issues to policy and business considerations.

For many years Lainey has offered AccessU participants an overview of the civil rights aspects of accessibility and usability. This year she will focus on the current legal landscape, presenting a straight forward look at the legal issues that accessibility advocates and champions — inside and outside institutions — need to know. This session will give audience members the tools and background to understand how the law impacts the work of creating truly accessible digital content.