Accessibility is a Civil Right: Lainey Feingold’s 2025 CSUN Digital Accessibility Legal Update Short article with slide deck and recording

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This is a short article about Lainey Feingold’s March 2025 talk at the CSUN conference. The talk is about the law and digital accessibility. She has given the talk many times before but this time was different. Because of the right-wing political chaos in the United States Lainey started with how people were feeling. She shared real risks and real reasons for hope. You can watch the talk, with captions, American Sign Language, or a transcript by choosing this link.

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On March 13, 2025 I offered the United States digital accessibility legal update as a featured presentation at the 40th annual CSUN Assistive Technology Conference in Anaheim California. I began attending the conference 25 years ago, and this year was one of many times I’d given the legal update.

This time was different.

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Delivering this talk less than two months into the new administration

My talk happened two days after the trump administration illegally fired close to 50% of the employees working for United States Department of Education. I dedicated the presentation to these government employees.

At 6:00 am on March 13, two hours before my talk, I learned that the top lawyers in 20 states and the District of Columbia had already filed a lawsuit challenging the administration’s actions.

(The resistance has continued. On March 25 twenty states and the District of Columbia issued a press release with the headline that they were seeking “a Court Order to Block Mass Firings, Transfer of Core Functions from Department of Education)

These actions — the attacks on critical government agencies and the harms caused by the administration on one hand, and the strong ongoing legal resistance from democratic states and private lawyers on the other — explained in a nutshell what I was trying to do in my talk.

I would be be honest about the risks and harms that digital accessibility law and people with disabilities are facing. And I would be realistic about the sources of power to fight those risks and harms. Sources of power that equal hope in these times.

I took my responsibility seriously. Many people in the United States right now are understandably unable to speak honestly about the current administration and its impacts on accessibility, disability, or what is happening in the legal space. Are unable to share their feelings about the developments of the past 2 months. Many work for organizations that risk losing (or have already lost) funding or that have instructed employees not to speak about certain topics. Many more find themselves unemployed despite years of stellar work histories.

I work for myself and can say what I want.

Links to the presentation and slide deck

Both PowerPoint formats open in draft presentation form. Select “Slide Show; Play from the Beginning” for the final presentation form.

Lainey’s goals and audience feedback

I appreciate the positive feedback this talk generated. This included a LinkedIn post that called the talk “essential viewing,” and one that saied “The highlight for me was Lainey Feingold’s session—an absolute masterclass in accessibility and advocacy, earning a well-deserved standing ovation from all.”

Yet most important to me were the people who stopped me in the hall during CSUN and said they “felt better” and that my talk “gave them some hope.”

I felt better too, and those hallway conversations showcase a reason why preparing this talk was so hard.

As a long-time public speaker in the digital accessibility legal space, I knew that this year I had to do more than just share recent legal developments. I had to — wanted to — address how we all were feeling in the planned chaos of this administration.

For the first time ever I started my talk with two check-in slides. The first had an image of a tornado landing on a bucolic field with a dark cloudy sky and lightning flashes. It had the words I and others are feeling, including powerlessness, fear, and lack of hope.

The skies were still cloudy, but they had somewhat cleared in the image on my second check-in slide. It explained that I would share reasons to feel better, including strong legal protections, legal resistance, and sources of hope + power.

Throughout I shared tips for navigating this anti-democratic time. This included my favorite advice from historian Timothy Snyder’s book titled”On Tyranny.” His first of twenty warnings from his deep knowledge of authoritarian movements is “Don’t Obey in Advance.”

For us in accessibility, to me this means not anticipating a roll-back of digital inclusion, and doing what we do until someone (actually, legally) stops us. As I said on March 13, “Staying the accessibility course is resistance right now.”

I ended with a “feeling” slide too. Reminding us all to take care of ourselves in these times. Care that for me includes leaning on the global accessibility community, and having a Joy Plan. (Read Lainey’s 2025 Digital Accessibility Joy Plan here.)

Alastaire Campbell’s 2025 CSUN Conference Notes included this line and validated my belief that a simple rendition of the law during the first 2 months of this slide towards authoritarianism would not be enough:

Overall, Lainey’s presence and presentation is somewhere between a therapy session and a call to activism, and very welcome in the current climate.

The talk might have been akin to a therapy session for at least this one audience member; I know for sure that preparing and delivering this talk had the same impact on me.

it is my privilege and honor to be part of the global digital accessibility community. And even though it was hard, I appreciated the opportunity to share the digital accessibility legal update this year with that community. I welcome your feedback. (Contact me through this website here.)