Articles
This page has short summaries of every article posted on Lainey Feingold's website with links to the full articles. Visit the Topics Page for all 300 plus articles on this website organized into 38 topics including Structured Negotiation and digital accessibility.
The articles here are in chronological order, arranged by the date of publication or the date of the most recent Update when an article has been updated. Most recent articles and updated articles appear first on this list.
When an Article is updated there is a link to the Updates right below the the summary of the page.
The Washington Mutual Agreement was negotiated by Lainey Feingold and Linda Dardarian using Structured Negotiations on behalf of the the California Council of the Blind (CCB), the Florida Council of the Blind, and several blind individuals. In the Agreement, Washington Mutual agreed to install Talking ATMs across the country, upgrade its website to comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and provide banking materials in alternative formats. Washington Mutual was the first bank to offer Talking ATMs in Spanish.
Read more… Washington Mutual Talking ATM, Web and Alternative Format Agreement
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.’”
Read more… Boston Globe Story about Brian Charlson and MLB.com Access Improvements
METROPOLITAN TRANSIT AUTHORITY OF HARRIS COUNTY ANNOUNCES DIGITAL ACCESSIBILITY INITIATIVE: HOUSTON (March 17, 2016) — Consistent with its commitment to all of its riders, the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County (“METRO”) today announced an initiative to make its affiliated websites, mobile applications, and print formation more accessible and inclusive. METRO is taking the lead in the public transportation field regarding online accessibility for individuals with visual impairments. The organization adopted the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.0 level AA as its accessibility standard and is making enhancements to work toward meeting this standard.
Read more… Houston Transit Agency Announces Digital Access Initiative
Curious about how the law has been used in the past year to increase access to print and digital information for people with disabilities? For many years Lainey Feingold and Linda Dardarian have done a Digital Accessibility Legal Update at the annual CSUN International Conference on Technology and People with Disabilities conference. This post summarizes the highlights from this year’s presentation and includes links to further information.
Read more… CSUN 2014 Annual Legal Digital Accessibility Update
The Law Office of Lainey Feingold is honored to announce that Lainey has received a 2014 California Lawyer of the Year (CLAY) Award for her work in 2013. She shares this year’s CLAY award for disability rights with Linda Dardarian of the Oakland civil rights firm Goldstein, Borgen, Dardarian & Ho. While maintaining their own law firms, Linda and Lainey have worked as partners in the truest sense of the word since 1994.
Read more… Feingold and Dardarian Receive California Lawyer Attorney of the Year Award
The past two months have seen too much loss in the blind advocacy community in the United States. In April I wrote about the death of Sue Ammeter, the blind activist behind a successful Structured Negotiation with the American Cancer Society. Then in May came news that Marlaina Lieberg and Ken Metz had died within days of each other. Both were committed advocates and Structured Negotiation champions.
Read more… Marlaina Lieberg and Ken Metz: Advocates Extraordinaire
On December 4th, 2016 60 Minutes aired a 13 minute story on “drive by lawsuits” under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The segment, which followed a puff piece on Paul Ryan, questioned lawsuits filed by three lawyers, two of them being sued by their disabled clients for malpractice. Anderson Cooper, the show’s host, did not…
Read more… 60 Minutes Slams ADA, Boosts Trump Agenda
After days of agonizing, I have decided not to attend and present at the CSUN Assistive Technology Conference in Anaheim next week. It would have been my 20th time attending and my 17th (more or less) time presenting. (The picture illustrating this post shows me with a Bank of America spokesperson in the CSUN exhibit…
Read more… I’m not going to CSUN in 2020 – I wish I were
[Update: Catherine Skivers died on December 12, 2019, a week after this post was written.] Catherine Skivers came to California in 1949 at the age of 23 with the man she had married at 16. Within a year, her husband had left her, offering her a one-way bus ticket back to her family in Missouri.…
Read more… Catherine Skivers: Organizer, Activist, Friend, Blind Community Leader
On October 21, 2019 friends and supporters of Disability Rights Advocates, a national nonprofit disability rights legal center, gathered in New York to celebrate the organization and honor this year’s Eagle Award recipients. One of the honorees was Bank of America, a long-time digital accessibility and disability inclusion leader and Structured Negotiation champion. The picture…
Read more… Bank of America Honored for Accessibility Work; Structured Negotiation Gets Shout Out