The Chicago Digital Accessibility & Inclusive Design Meetup presents,"What's Law Got to Do with It, Access as a Civil Right," with Lainey Feingold.
[Lainey]: Ok. Thank you, Dennis. Dennis is amazing, you're very lucky to have him in Chicago.
Can everybody hear me? I think... [tapping finger on mic]. Oh, the podium mic... Ohhh... Podium mic?
[Dennis]: Check, check...
[Lainey]: Oh... Okay... oh boy, can I just hold this? Okay, that's better. Okay, well, thank you for coming.
In my view, if you're here, and you're a part of the Accessibility Chicago meetup, you are an Accessibility Champion. So, really, sometimes it's so hard to do this work. And you're doing it, you're here, so thank you.
This is gonna be about law what does law I have to do with it and the basic answer, if you have to leave right now is right on the title page which says what's law got to do with it, access as a civil right. And that's what we're going to talk about.
So I have up here my Twitter, which is LFLegal. I really think Twitter is a great place for accessibility information and I tweet about accessibility issues around law, as well as about structured negotiation which is the collaborative way that I practice law. I also my website up here which is LFLegal.com. I have a lot of legal information, not just about the work that I do, but the work that everybody's doing around the country, in the legal space. Really trying to support you guys. Because you're where it's really happening. And the legal space is trying to help you in it in its best form. So, let's get started.
Ok, so I like the idea of putting the law in your pocket. So are any of you lawyers, besides me? No, okay.. So this is great that you wonder about the law and I support you and think that the law is something that we all need to put in our pocket. We have to be able to talk about the law. I like this picture of the pocket that I have with the scissors and tool ... tape measure and a pencil. Because the law is the same thing.
It shouldn't be something foreign and outside, locked away in a law book or in a big building, even though we appreciate the ABA for hosting us in this building. The law is something that we all need and we have to learn how to talk about it in a way that can help you do your job.
And that's really why I do these accessibility meetups, and I've done it in San Francisco and Toronto, because I really do feel you guys are on the front lines, and the law can help you, when your head is against the wall and you need to convince someone for more funding, or you need to motivate your team. Law is not the only thing, well I shouldn't be the first thing, but the law is there to help you.
And then, the third thing to put in your pocket that I'm hoping you'll walk away with. I'm going to ask you a question first. So, if I'd say, oh we're gonna talk about the law today, do you get a feeling like, "oh my god, that's so exciting, I can't wait," or do you like, "oh the law," you know the law is it like something that you're afraid of? or is it something that feels motivational?
Which word is more like the law, fear or motivation? Fear. Most people said fear. The one people who didn't say fear, good thank you. Yeah, so how can we shift from fear to motivation? Because, yeah, you can motivate people, you know, with the stick and being afraid and threats, but I really don't think that is the kind of motivation we want to give over, and I don't think it's as effective.
So, that's what the goal is for tonight, is that you can walk away, being able to talk about the law in the accessibility space, help you do your job and be able to shift from fear to motivation. And the main way to do that, again, if you have to leave right now, the main way is right here in this first slide that says accessibility is about people.
And there's a picture here that I got from a website from the Mobility International USA, which is a non-profit group that brings women from around the world to do various accessibility and disability programs. And there's women from all around the world, high-fiving, hands up. Accessibility is about people.
So I think we all know, it's not about checklists, it's certainly not about the law, it's about people. And whatever your role is ... and there's lots of different roles. We heard some of them earlier, but we didn't get to hear from everyone. Whatever your role is, you can make that role. You can make that role about people.
So, what kind of people?
I just made one list here of the kind of people that the law has, that have been part of the accessibility legal space. People, who, a lot of you guys call "users" and as lawyers, we call them "clients." And, I don't know what other terms, personas when they're not actual people, but kind of a sub for people. We're talking about students. We're talking about shoppers, patients, customers, people who pay taxes, investors, employees, applicants, fans like baseball fans and sports fans, citizens, members of the public, transit riders, diners, people who eat in restaurants, homeowners, lawyers and clients.
So, all these different categories of people are people whose accessibility needs have been impacted in the legal space. So, is that ... do any of you work with any other categories of people that they didn't hit up here? That you know you need to make your work accessible because... say ...
[Attendee speaking away from mic]
[Lainey]: Yeah, so there was just an affirmation of patients needing accessibility. The audience member works at Northwestern and raising awareness. So, that's the main thing whenever you're stuck, it's really about people and this is what you're doing it for.
So, accessibility is a civil right of disabled people. I illustrate this with a picture of a march leading up to the ADA. It says, to save people into a march, with a flat ... with a banner saying "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," which is a Martin Luther King quote. Because, accessibility is a civil right. It's good for a lot of other things and I'm sure a lot of your other meetups talk about that.
You know, SEO and it's easier to find things, it's easier for everyone to read, seniors need accessibility, but the legal space is about disabled people, people with disabilities who have a civil right to information and participation. So, that's really the key, sort of legal thing to have in your pocket, about accessibility being a civil right. And still, the first picture I showed was before the ADA, which was passed in 1990. And this one is 27 years ago, a march just like two months ago, to protect people with disabilities right to healthcare.
So, the civil rights issue is on basic things, like the right to live in the community, the right to health care and everything you are doing in the accessibility space, the right to fly in an airplane, the right to make a reservation, the right to have your taxes paid without having to show someone your private bank account, the right to bank of course, all of this has to do with civil rights of people.
And that is part of your role, that is what you're doing. So why do we say that? Because with accessibility we have participation inclusion and equality, and without accessibility, we have like this woman looking in from outside, people are left out, excluded and discriminated against. And that is why the legal space is even involved.
That's why we're even ... that's why I'm a lawyer that does digital accessibility. Accessibility is also right to information. The Americans with Disabilities Act is really clear that if you're giving out information to the public, or your customers, your employment, whatever, that information has to be available for everyone and not everybody can see and not everybody can hear and not everybody can use a mouse, which you guys all know because you're in this space.
So accessibility is a right to information about education, transit, voting, all the same things. Finance, healthcare, retail, employment, community, sports, and we could have five slides about this. And the right to participate in these things as well.
So why be afraid of that? Like how did this happen, that the law suddenly became something to be afraid of, when it's about including people in the broadest group of people that there are in the work that we're doing. So the legal equation for access, that's the sort of kind of big picture issue that accessibility is a civil right and you guys are all civil rights champions by doing this work and a couple people said before that they're frustrated and they may be shut down on emails or phone calls or people, you know, roll your eyes because, oh you're asking for money for access again.
But remember, you are part of a community, a global community, really, that is fighting for access. So that's the foundation, that's a core foundation, but without advocates, without people with disabilities, who are fighting for their rights and without strategies, without the who and the how, we just have a foundation and nothing else. So the combination of foundation and advocates and strategies equals accessibility wins, And that's what I want to talk about next, in terms of what's happening in the legal space.
The laws are the foundation. We have a very strong foundation for accessibility, and you know I'm just gonna really take off my watch, so I can stay on time, and just kind of quickly go through the foundation. We have US laws and policies and we have state laws and policies. In terms of US Federal, we of course have the Americans with Disabilities Act, which covers the public sector, the private sector as well as employment, we have federally funded activities, if the federal government is gonna give money to universities or colleges or transit systems or parks or any sort of program, they gotta include everybody. And that's why section 504 says it's discrimination if you use federal funds and don't use it in a way that includes everybody.
So that's where you come in. If you're working for any sort of environment, in any sort of sector environment that has federal funding, there's also federal employment, that's Section 501 and 503, which prevents discrimination. Any law that prevents discrimination, requires accessibility. Because in the digital age, without accessibility, you are leaving people out. That is ... it's not like, someone earlier said, it's a gray area. Not really gray when you think about it like that. Because everything's online now. There's no choice, it's not like online ...
When Kelly and I first started in this, online banking was a little sliver and maybe an argument could be made, oh well, you can use the phone, or you can go in or branch. It is not like that anymore. Everything is ... and these laws are designed, even the old ones even the laws before there was a web, they were designed for inclusion. And accessibility means inclusion .
So federal procurement, excuse me, procurement, which many of you know, section 508 has to do with federal purchases, the airlines have a special law for making sure that airline websites and kiosks are accessible. But do we have regulations? Now, how many of you have been in conversations, well there's no web regulations, so it's a gray area.
Have any of you been ...yeah, some of you maybe four or five people. So, the Americans with Disabilities Act is a law and most laws, then, have regulations to flesh out what does the law really mean, what are people required to do. So the ADA itself, in my view, in the view of growing number of courts, requires websites, mobile apps, kiosks, technology to be accessible, because without it, people are left out. And that's really ... the law, to have in your pocket .
It's not that complicated to understand that the ADA was designed as a broad law of inclusion. So then we do have regulations in the ADA that say companies, governments, have to effectively communicate. And in this day in age, like I say, you cannot effectively communicate unless your website is accessible. Already, have regulations that say, effective communication means technology has to be accessible. We already have that.
What we don't have is specific regulations that say, in order to be accessible, you should meet WCAG 2.0 AA, or you should have a certain kind of training. We don't have that sort of detail, which I know would help you in your jobs. But, we do not have it, which is why I have this red circle with a line through it. We do not have those web regulations. We are probably not going to see them in our lifetime. I don't know ... you know, they were proposed in 2010, they didn't make it out as official regulations during the Obama administration. They are now in inactive status.
So basically, what I say about that is that the web regulations are inactive but the ADA is not. So don't let anyone say to you, "there are no regulations, we don't know what to do." Because as you'll see in a minute, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 AA, that is a universally accepted standard. It's used in Section 508 for federal procurement, it's used for airline access, it's used by people who litigate cases and settle them, it's used in structured negotiation, in all the cases I've done, about 30 cases on web accessibility, it's always been the standard. So, that is the way to make websites accessible, one aspect of it. That's the coding standard. There are other things we'll talk about pretty soon.
So, the web regulations are inactive, the ADA isn't. And that's a really good thing to have in your pocket, too. Because, what happens is these issues, because it's a lot of lawsuits being filed, they're in your companies or your agencies, they're ending up in the lawyer offices. Not good. Accessibility should not be in lawyer offices. Even like my own. Really, the best thing for accessibility is to be with you guys, who are doing the work. But because there's so many lawsuits, it's more and more in the law offices and then you get these lawyers who don't know that much about it, look it up say there's no web regs we don't have to do accessibility. Not true.
Okay, there's also state laws. I have a map of the United States here with a patchwork of colors for each state. Because, there is a patchwork of laws. Every state has its own laws, including Illinois, requiring state-funded IT information technology to be accessible, requiring state procurement, again, when state money is used for things, everyone in the state needs to be included. Illinois has their Information Technology Act, which is like the Illinois 508. There are state anti-discrimination laws, there's an Illinois Human Rights Act, all these laws are part of the foundation. And Chicago has a Human Rights Ordinance.
Part of the foundation, like we saw before with the federal laws, that give advocates tools to make sure technology is accessible to them. And beyond the US, I know we're not really getting deep into the law detail here, but I wanted to put this up, because you guys are really part of a global movement. And I know sometimes when we're in our own cubicles or in my own office, you know in Berkeley, it's really easy to forget that. And I think it's important to remember that, because, in my view, the law, even if we ... you know, just terrible things happen in the next four years, given the administration, we can't change the tide.
The tide of this is not going to change. Because, all over the world, there are laws and regulations and people doing just what you're doing here in Chicago to make the web a more accessible place. And so there's foundation beyond the US with the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, they have a section in there, Article 9, that says IT has to be accessible. 173 countries have ratified that. Did that treaty, of course, we have not. But, you know, we have the ADA, which some countries, you know, most countries don't have. If your interested in the federal law, Dennis you can have these slides up on ...
[Dennis]: [Indecipherable]
[Lainey]: Okay, the slides will be incorporated in the recording, so, I have the links here, the Web Content Accessibility... the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative keeps a list of international laws. I keep one, that I rely on international people I know from Twitter to update. So, if you're ever get like get down and think you're the only one like in this, like remember that you're part of a global movement here.
And again, accessibility is about people. I have the same smiling people here. And those people are also advocates, because without advocates, you have the foundation, which I have in this picture. Really strong foundation, cement blocks, really strong, it's not going away. Without advocates and strategies, that that's all you have. You don't have implementation.
So now, I want to talk about what's happening in the US on strategies for enforcing civil rights of people with disabilities. So the advocates toolbox. I so believe in this, that I carry around my toolbox. Everywhere I go, I carry my toolbox, which has a lot of tools in it. Because there's a lot of different ways to enforce these laws, and a lot ... I don't ... I'm not going to take a poll or ask, but you know there's a lot of lawsuits being filed right now and a lot of people feel that there's too many lawsuits.
The lawsuits are obviously the hammer. The way that I work and work with Kelly and others, which we'll talk about in a minute, it's called Structured Negotiation. It's more collaborative. I haven't exactly figured out what tool it is. It's not like a ... it's not like a saw, I'm really sure, but I know it's not the hammer. If you feel like the strategy ... I don't like the lawsuits, be careful that your opinion is limited to the strategy and don't ... it's all too easy to, uh, too many lawsuits. The law shouldn't help us.
No, the law is critical. The law of civil rights of disabled people is critical. If some lawyer is misusing the foundation, then let's talk about that lawyer and how to keep them in check. Let's not talk about dismantling, as some people do, the foundation. So, I'm really into the tool box and there's three basic tools that are being used and have been used for the past really seventeen years. Which I guess now is a good time to tell you, answer a question that came up earlier, how did I get into this and why do the banks have accessibility.
So, one of the tools in the toolbox is Structured Negotiation. And that's a way of working with big companies, small companies, government agencies, without lawsuits, in collaboration. It all started in the early 90s when some blind people came to me and my colleagues in California and said, there's not a single ATM we can use in the United States. Because there were no talking ATMs anywhere in the world. And so, we could have filed a lawsuit, but we didn't. We wrote letters to Bank America, Wells Fargo and Citibank in 1995. Ok, I'm aging myself, but that's okay. With age comes wisdom. I'm trying to... I'm trying to start owning that.
We wrote those letters in 1995 and then by 1999, and I tell all these stories in my book, by 1999, all those three banks had talking ATMs. Well, beginning 1999, 2000, 2001, and the reason was that structured negotiation is a person-centered, it's about people, the same way as accessibility it's about people, and blind people, such as Kelly, and I'm gonna get to Kelly cares in a minute here, we were in talking ATM labs and blind people were working with the developers, just like I really want to encourage you to get disabled people into your labs, into your companies, every chance. And that's why we got talking ATMs.
So in 1998 about, some of our clients came to us and said we're making really good progress on the talking ATMs, but there's a new thing called online banking. And, like I said before, online banking is not accessible. So, we got the first agreement with Bank America in 2000. So for 17 years, Bank of America has been committed to web accessibility, along with Chase here in Chicago, some of the early banks. So after we got Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citibank, Kelly Pierce, who's sitting in the front row here, who is blind, called us and said, well what about Chicago? Like what are we, chopped liver? Can you bring this stuff? Because these weren't national banks yet.
So we came to Chicago, we worked with Bank One, they too got the talking ATMs and the accessible website. And it was the very first time we used this word Structured Negotiation. With the California banks, it was kind of luck. We wrote the letters instead of the lawsuit. They said, yes. Part of me thought it was luck. Then we named this thing and we used it for the first time, and here in Chicago, it really took root, structured negotiation. And, we went on to do it in a lot of other cases which we'll talk about in a minute.
So I'm a fan of structured negotiation. I wrote the book to share with people the stories ... they're mostly, they're not mostly, there are a hundred percent about blind technology, websites, talking prescription labels, mostly about websites. I really believe in the method. It's always been my first strategy that I talk about when I do slides.
However... this year, three months ago, I switched the first strategy to lawsuits. Not because I believe in the hammer, because I think the hammer can be useful, lawsuits can be really useful, especially in this political time we find ourselves in, but poor web accessibility, it's so much about people and in a lawsuit, all the people get lost. The users, your UX people, the users, the clients, the people, they get the name of plaintiff and nobody listens to them. The people who really know stuff, like you guys, you don't really get a role, because your lawyers are doing all the talking. So, I really like structured negotiations best, I still think it's first.
However, there's a lot of lawsuits happening in the digital accessibility space, and I want to give it over to you. So, there's lawsuits in federal and state court, federal agency complaints is another, US strategy and structured negotiation. So, there are foundational lawsuits and, again, this is it really a gray area, saying that accessibility is required by US law and those main lawsuits are Target, how many of you have heard that there was a lawsuit on ... yeah, most people have heard that because that was really the first one in 2006 in federal court, the judge said, yeah, Target's website has to be accessible.
Then, how many know there's a web case against Netflix? Yes, fewer people every time I ask this question, A lot of people know about Target, fewer people know about Netflix. Netflix was very important because the judge of Massachusetts said all streaming content needed to be accessible and Netflix doesn't have a physical place. So that's been this legal issue that, I don't get to legal about it, but, oh, is a website only required to be accessible if there's a physical place?
The real thing you need to have in your pocket is different courts say different things. You only have one website so, Netflix and Scribd which is ... how many people know there's a web accessibility case against Scribd? Probably no one. Yes, see, oh ... well ... That doesn't count, ADA, Kelly, experts in the field. Scribd is like a Netflix of magazines and books and, they too, don't have a place. And the judge also said great opinion. And I have all of these ... I have a legal update tab on my website. And you could see legal updates back for like the last four years and I always put the settlement links to the settlement, to the press releases, to articles I write about it.
So there's a lot of, I know you can't really get all the content you need for your pocket in the slides. Yeah?
[Attendee]: [Indecipherable]
[Lainey]: Well, the thing about precedent, you're asking, the question was, do these things stand for precedent? Is that ... yeah, so precedent in the law I think means something different than precedent in the world. So in the law, you only have precedent, like if these are Netflix, Target, Scribd, also on the screen is Miami University, which I put as an example.
There's a lot of good work, the National Federation of the Blind has done with universities. Lots of settlements that go in-depth and what's required to really have an accessible environment for students. And there's a voting button because there's been cases all around the country to make sure ... they've mostly been around blind people's right to access voting websites, and as more information goes online about voting, who the candidates are, but also online ballots.
So to answer the question, for Target, it's a district court, for Netflix, district court, which is the lowest federal level, they really don't have precedent beyond ... they don't even have precedent in their own districts, because recently, I'll tell, I will talk in a minute, There was one district in central California, where a judge threw out one web case and a different judge in the same district kept another web case.
So you'll see in a minute, I have a slide of a rollercoaster. Cases with ... there's a lot of new lawyers coming in, filing cases, we're gonna win some, we're gonna lose some. And the thing to remember is that for the reason I said I think legal precedent is different what I call industry precedent that I know from my, all I can tell you is what I know from 20 years, that when we first did those Bank talking ATM cases, all the other banks followed the precedent. And the vendors, I was once in a conference on the raising hand well we have to do everything accessible because we sell to Bank America.
But that's not a legal precedent. That's Bank America ... bought into it because they met their clients and structured negotiation, they're blind customers and they bought it real and when you buy it real, you have to include it in all your vendor contracts. So I really believe in industry precedent.
Talking prescription labels the same way, really hard to get one pharmacy to do it. But once we got one, people wanted to do it more. So I really think there's not a legal precedent of many of these cases. They're all in district, different circuits. The way it works in the federal system is 11 different circuits, some of the circuits say you have to have a connection to a physical place. You have to be like a Target store. Other circuits, like Massachusetts, which is the First Circuit, where Netflix was, say No, you don't have to have a physical place. Web sites have to be accessible regardless.
So the US Supreme Court is the final, you know, arbiter on this. They've never had a case on it. In the near future, we have to hope they never do, because it's there it's extremely risky. I mean in this field, we have to be really careful about ... we should be really careful about the kind of cases we bring. But these are the foundational cases.
I want to just tell you real quick about six new wins, where I have a smiling child, looks to have Down syndrome, with her thumbs up saying hooray for the six new wins. And those are cases against Winn-Dixie grocery store, how many have heard there was a case against Winn-Dixie? A few people. It's a grocery store. Winn-Dixie lost, the blind plaintiff won. It was the first trial in the United States where a judge, not a jury but a judge, listened to evidence and said this grocery store should have had an accessible website. So the grocery store lost the case. Before you write down too many notes, you should know it's now on appeal to the Eleventh Circuit. Because that's how law works.
You know, when you have a fight, there's a loser. In structured negotiation and no it sounds kind of pollyannaish, but it's really a win-win. And that has been, you know, my experience.
So Winn-Dixie was in one of the circuits that said you have to have a physical place. So the plaintiff was able to show that he went on the website to find the store locations, but again, you have one website, if you're working for a company you can't really rely on the fact that some courts say you need a physical place.
Hobby Lobby and Blick Art Materials are two ... in both these cases we're about websites. They have not been appealed yet, but the time hasn't run out, so it may happen. The Blick Art Materials ... these are both ... ok, here's another thing that happens in law. There's a lot of skirmishes before the battle is over. So, all of these cases, except well, Winn-Dixie, was a trial, but the rest, what happens, somebody files a lawsuit, the company files an aggressive lawyer to respond, and then they try to throw the case out of court. And so, when I say Hobby Lobby is a win, it means Hobby Lobby tried to throw the case out of court and the judge said no. The case can stay in the court. The judge didn't decide, it should be WCAG. They didn't decide, even it's too expensive, it's not ... they didn't decide anything, except the case can stay in court.
But that shows us at the ADA covers it and it's so expensive to do this legal fighting. I mean, spend money on access, not lawyers. This is like, I need to make us ... you maybe can ask that sticker company to make a sticker for that. Spend money on access, because ... even if you end up winning the case, you paid the lawyers so much money, and it's just, it's not cost-effective.
Blick Art Materials, I really recommend if you have time and you can look on my website for the link, the opinion was written by a 96 year old judge in New York. Thank God he stayed on the bench. And he got accessibility ... you know, you think on 96 he's not going to get it. He's like, we live in an age where this can be done. Like, why aren't they doing it? I think he said, it would be cruel to say that ADA does not cover this, When the ADA, as I said, as a foundation for a sweeping inclusion, it's beautiful.
I mean, if you only want to read to court orders, I recommend the Blick and the Scribd, because those judges really got them. You can search on my search button and you can find links to the actual settlements.
Okay, there's one new loss, just two so you don't feel like didn't give you the full story for your pocket there. Domino's Pizza won their case in Los Angeles. How many of you have heard about that? Yeah, just a couple. So maybe I shouldn't be telling the rest of you, I don't want to give you negative information, but it's happened. Domino's Pizza lost their case. It's on appeal to the Ninth Circuit.
I'm involved with a couple lawyers writing friends of the court briefs for all the cases that go up. We want to make sure that the judges realize this is not just about one lawyer or one person. A lot of national disability rights organizations are filing amicus, we're we want to make us brief together on all the cases that go up. So, I feel really good about that.
Problem in Domino's, the judge didn't get it. Said, oh, there are no regulations, it's not really fair to have a lawsuit. And so far that's the only case that has said that and to your question, it's in the central district of California, and ... one of the, oh, ah ... Hobby Lobby might be in the Central District of California too. So it was the same court district came to a completely different reasoning about what does it mean not to have regulations. And there's more cases coming and this is just a way to kind of inoculate you as you read them.
If you start going on Twitter and following me or Dennis or any people who post this stuff, you're gonna hear more about these cases and there's more of them, which here's one example. This is a picture of a University up here, times eight. Two weeks ago, one lawyer filed eight cases against eight universities in New York City. So you know I'm not gonna give an opinion on what I think about that strategy, but it's real and it's there in those cases are out there. They're probably going to have motions to dismiss it, wins or losses
Oh ... I had one other slide, I didn't put the slide in but I can tell you, the other slide had a picture of a credit union, times nine. Because last week ... you know about that?
[Attendee]: [off mic]
[Lainey]: Yeah, we'll see this was the thing, so they, yeah, so in for this for the people who are listening you weren't on the mic you said that you work for a remediation company and you've remediated hundreds of Community Bank because of the demand letters. Well, now there's been nine cases, nine filed in Virginia in one week. So that's brand new and that's out there. And ... it's a roller coaster.
And here's my picture of the roller coaster and I think it's really important because there'd be a lot of attention ... like I can guarantee you the next time there is a company or a school or government agency who wins, you're gonna see a lot written, oh my god, web accessibility isn't required. This is considered this year's booster shot against that.
So you have in your pocket knowing, hey there are lawsuits all over the country. That doesn't change the foundation, doesn't change the foundation cases. The big picture one, like I said, some courts say you need connection to a physical place. Other courts say you don't and big picture to is don't be distracted by the court losses. I really believe in that. I have to tell myself that.
Because you know I've been doing this for, like I said, 17 years, and it breaks my heart when ever see one court loss or whenever I see a lawsuit I think it's frivolous or whatever I think a lawyer was overreaching I'm like, oh my god, this is so important to people, it shouldn't even be in the law. And the law could temporarily screw it up if we lose sight of the big picture.
So I think the big picture is like this rolling ... I have a picture of a highway with the you know ups and downs. But I think all legal roads lead to access. And here's my slide for my line of spend money on access not lawyers. I mean that really has to be the message.
Strategy number two, that people have used government agency activity. The US Department of Justice was long a champion on digital accessibility. They have a web page, those cases are still good, the Department of Justice still set it. It's ADA dot gov forward slash access dot tech, I think, that's it, or tech dot access. You can see back 12 years, I think. The US Department of Justice did settlements. Of course, they're not doing them any more, but that web page is still up. So, fingers crossed.
The big activity here on government agencies that's happening right now is the Department of Education ... have any of you been affected by complaints by Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights? Just one person. Well, my slide here says, 1700 and counting. Department of Ed complaints about web access. I swear to you, I learned yesterday there's more than 2,500. And they're all being filed by one person. The vast majority being filed by one person out of Michigan, who's basically doing it on a volunteer basis.
The picture I have here is of a barrage, which I had to look up, because there was a headline and a head deck type of journal, that said barrage of complaints being filed. A barrage is like a military thing. I guess you guys know. I didn't know. So there's a lot of settlements. The Department of Ed is still investigating these. You can go to the Department of Education website under Office of Civil Rights and you can read them all.
They have, they're called resolution letters, or resolution settlements. You can read the letters that the Department of Ed writes to the higher ed, and you can read the settlements, as a results, which we're gonna talk about what those include in a minute.
So, of course, strategy three, as you now know my favorite strategy is structured negotiation. And like I said it's been really effective with banks. I just put a few logos from some of the companies we've worked with. H-E-B is a grocery store in Texas. Do I have any Riverland in Texas?
Here's an example of structured negotiation. We worked on talking prescription labels with them. And because, the very first meeting, the pharmacy people got to meet the blind clients. Again, all accessible tech is about people. And once you meet a blind person who has prescriptions and can't read the label, it's yeah, it's a lot harder than if you hire a lawyer to read a legal brief that says well, the ADA doesn't mention talking prescription labels. That's true, it doesn't mention talking prescription labels. But, it does talk about inclusion and effective communication. So H-E-B was just one of many. We've worked with CVS and Walgreens, Rite Aid, Caremark to work on the talking prescription label.
Major League Baseball, another great example of structured negotiation. I talk a lot about the story of Major League Baseball in the book. But just really quick to you guys is that blind baseball fans, well, first of all, blind people, like sighted people like baseball. And a lot of baseball is online. How many people know that baseball is like big thing online? Oh you're on the ... well you have the Chicago Cubs, right now ... yeah.
So the blind fans started in Boston, Red Sox fans had tried to work with Major League Baseball with ... are you from Boston? Ah, from Worcester. Oh yes, yes, don't hold it against her. So they had tried to work with Major League Baseball and another good thing about structured negotiation, it's a way to open a door. And when you file a lawsuit, it's also a way to open a door, kind of like with a steamroller way to break down the door. But we were able to write to Major League Baseball and say hey you have a problem here, with your website and here a blind baseball fans, let's see if we can work it out.
It's a legal violation. We have a strong foundation, you know, structured negotiation doesn't shy away from referencing the foundation, kind of like how I'm doing here, which hopefully is not giving you a sense of fear, but a sense of, wow, we have a country with good laws that protect disabled people. We sat down with Major League Baseball over the phone, because we're all in different places. I'm in California, they're based in New York, and the blind fans and the people like you and Major League Baseball, they just hit it off.
And I was ... and Linda Dardarian, who also did this work with me, another lawyer, we were really in the back seat and it could really be about people it was very successful. They became a real champion. I think they use their services, they help other entertainment, they have a very big tech department. They worked on their mobile app, they were really a great partner.
We work with Anthem. I don't know, are any of you guys in health care? I mean health care, that ... should put that on your list Dennis for outreach. Because, health care, what ... when you talk about ... I mean another piece of accessibility is privacy. And one of the things I always try to say when I speak to companies, like you wouldn't let somebody put content on your website that created a privacy breach or a security breach.
But if you don't have accessible pages, disabled people have to get help from family members or strangers or whomever, to get basic private information, like what's on their health records or, you know, what's on their financial records. So I think it's really important that we use the privacy and security and health as a piece of the accessibility to remind people, yeah, without accessibility, you know, if your thing doesn't have keyboard access, you could have a veteran and can't use a mouse and he you know doesn't get the information. So Anthem was a great partner of ours. More structured negotiation win-wins.
Lyft worked in structured negotiation, not with me, with other lawyers on their ride sharing service. The Motley Fool was a great partner, ETrade really good partner. And just a shout out and ETrade, big company, worked with them on their trading platform, as I did also with Schwab, and accessibility is about people on the side of the disabled people, but it's also about people like you. And at ETrade, there's like one woman there who is driving this entire accessibility initiative. And she's a paralegal in the legal office. So I usually say, oh keep accessibility out of a law office. I might have even said that here today. But, I have to put a footnote to that, to say, you know, she became a champion of this and, you know, that's a very big company she was working with.
So ETrade, Charles Schwab was another trading company I work with that was really effective. Again, because we had the blind trader come into the office and meet the developers and meet the trainers and their jaws are dropping. They had never seen a blind person use their site. This woman has JAWS on her computer plus a Braille display and there was one point in her demonstration, you know, she was showing them and she was like a no-nonsense person, and she got something, she goes, like, I don't know what this is, like, this is really easy, you can fix this by labeling the button. And the developer said, it's the Help button and I don't think you need it. You know, they were just so impressed, not that they should be impressed that someone can use their site, but, I really can't stress enough the importance to bringing people with disabilities into meet.
There's a great, it's unrelated, there's a great blog post at the DropBox accessibility people wrote that I really recommend to you, how to create enthusiasm and excitement about ... you can just look up DropBox accessibility culture, and they do things, like have awards and badges and things like that.
So laws, we have the foundation we have the advocates we have a strategy and we have the results. And this is results for these same people we talked about before. We're gonna skip through that and talk about good strategies make access stick. So there are basically a list the best practices that have come out of the legal space and they have also come out of the non-legal space. Many companies do this without waiting for structured negotiation or a lawsuit.
But there are best practices that you can use in your pocket to say, you know, many legal settlements have required this and now that we're getting judges to say more about accessibility, sometimes judges are saying stuff about these things too.
So the best practice list, first of all, I think you guys all know this, that whatever aspect of tech you're working on, has to be part of your accessibility plan. Web, mobile, learning systems, library systems, trading platforms, kiosks is starting to be more litigation on kiosks.
It was just a recent settlement against the eatsa restaurant chain. Do you have that in Chicago? Do I know ... how many of you have heard of that? It seems like a few have. It's a restaurant where they try not to have any workers, it's really kind of sad, and it's just a tablet that you order your food and you pay your bill and someone wasn't thinking about people. They weren't thinking about all their people when they put in that system and it wasn't accessible.
So there was just a good settlement after a ... I don't remember what the lawsuit was filed. I think it might have been. But it's settled right away there weren't any court... I mean structured negotiation is when you don't even have to do a lawsuit. A lot of times people file a lawsuit but then they kind of go in and negotiation, which you can call structured negotiation or not structured or just regular negotiation. So the eatsa chain agreed that all the kiosks are going to be accessible to everybody.
So if you have have kiosks, the best practice line is do it right at the beginning. Do an audit of everything, even if you have separate teams, which, you know, many companies I work with the web team is different than the mobile team. Sometimes the twain never meets, and you could have a great web ... website people have heard of website accessibility a little more than they've heard of mobile accessibility, which is so silly because we're migrating away ... this is another problem with law, is that law is like slow like a turtle and technology at its best is fast and creative.
And law looks back. What's the precedent on this? You know, what happened in the past? Whereas, you guys are the creative people. You want to look forward. So, the more you can do before the law hits your company, the better, because then you lose some element of control.
The standard, like I said, is WCAG 2.0 AA. All the settlement's use it, the Justice Department used it when they were doing this work, all the Department of Ed settlements use it. As I said, it's in the 508, it's not specifically in ADA, but there's no question that it's a good standard and it is the standard that everybody should be working on. You know, we are ... there is a WCAG 2.1 out there.
WCAG 2.1 is that it's ... and Dennis knows more about this than I do, but it's not gonna mean all your work on 2.0 AA is no good. No, it's still going to be good. There's going to be new things that you can do, the law will catch up to that, but it will be ... the site's will be better if you can use 2.1 when it comes out, but WCAG 2.0 AA right now is the policy and around the world too. And all that internet when you're ... don't forget of yourselves as part of an international champion network.
Have a web accessibility coordinator decide where the person is and make sure the person is in kind of a neutral place. I know every place has politics. You want to make sure the web access ... and it should be called the accessibility coordinator, not the web access, I'm sorry, I want to change that. Just to get away from this idea that it's only about web, the buck has to stop somewhere and it needs to stop in a place that's respected throughout the organization.
I mean, hats off to Microsoft for having Jenny Lay-Flurrie in a position called Chief Accessibility Officer in the C-suite and, she's amazing. I mean, that's another thing, if you don't know her and you don't know the work Microsoft's doing, I really recommend it to you, she's a great person to follow on Twitter and she does a lot of great blog posts. And Microsoft's ... another thing, Microsoft's new CEO has two disabled children, one of who's an adult. And that is really making a difference. And to the company, in the combination of him whose name I'm forgetting right now and Jenny, is just really a good example of companies that are putting the best practices into place. You know, they're not waiting for a lawsuit to come knocking.
Use an independent consultant when you need one. But it's really important to treat anything you do with accessibility the same the same... the same way you treat anything else. Too often, I see companies, they just panic, they run out, they get the first consultant that they, you know, there's a lot and just like there's a lot of new plaintiffs lawyers, there's a lot of new defense lawyers and there's a lot of new consultants. And you really need to be careful. I tell everyone, talk to at least two or three people, get references, treat it like you would any other vendor.
Somehow, people think accessibility is ... oh, we don't have to worry about it in the same way. And, no, that's not true. We did a deal with American Express early on to have Braille and large print statements. And they promised that they would have a statements delivered to blind people in a reasonable time. Well, it would be one month, even two months before the statement came, because they were doing this one-off thing with some small vendor and finally, they didn't like it either, finally we agreed, they're gonna systematize the process.
This was back in the early 2000s and hire a vendor, the same way they'd hire a vendor for anything else. You know, vet it and make sure the person or the company is you know good and responsible and get references and have good vendor contracts. So, it's really important, if you're going to use a consultant, if you don't have the in-house help to make sure whoever you get is good.
Staff training is critical. I think Dennis ... many, some of you may have heard me say I could do a whole presentation, just say train all staff. I mean in terms of putting something in your pocket almost every case starts, in structured negotiation, when somebody calls the legitimate cases somebody calls up and says, I can't do this and they don't get the right answer. You've got to have a program where whoever's answering the phone or answering the email understands that people with disabilities use technology. And if that means having a company-wide program and bringing people in, whatever it takes.
Still to this day, I'm sure Kelly and other blind people in the room can attest that you call up and someone will say, don't you have someone who can help you with this? Does that still happen? Yeah. I mean we did a case and the woman called up and they said can't your mother read that to you? She says, I'm 45, my mother is dead. Like what are you talking about? But this still happens, because the training isn't good and training again like anything else, make sure you have good people, ideally at least one person with a disability doing the training early on.
When I did architectural access cases, we did stadium work and we'd have a person a blind person, a person a wheelchair go and talk to the teams, made all the difference. Because too many people don't know and that's why structured negotiation again. If accessibility is people centered, then people with disabilities have to be worked into your usability testing, and all your other programs.
Adding it to performance evaluations. If it's someone's job to make something accessible, now you should be evaluated on that, so they can get improvement when they fall short.
Post a policy, have a homepage accessibility information page. I'm a big believer in this. Have any of you been in a situation where you wanted to put something on your website and someone from a different department said no we don't want to say anything about it. Have any of you guys ... yeah ... Some lawyer ... this is the thing, lawyers are risk averse, so we better not say anything, because then someone will think we're not doing enough.
Well, hello, when somebody calls me with a problem, the very first thing I do is look on the website and see is there a link to an accessibility page. And if there is, there needs to be a good phone number and a good email and a good statement. It could be one sentence ... "We are committed to making our website usable by everyone. If you have a problem, call this number."
I mean, it's bad ... you know I like it when you say more and you say using WCAG, but really, if you just said that, and on my site I have a popular post section and there's a link ... I gather up accessibility information pages from all over the web, so I have about 50 on there, you could take a look at them.
Use a testing tool, do usability testing. Really be specific in your vendor contracts. I mean, people always like my website. I you know someone today said to me, "oh, your website's really easy to find things." You know, person without a disability. I said yeah that's what accessibility is. And that wasn't coincidental. I mean I have an amazing Wordpress developer named Nathalie McLeese from Pasadena, who has Purple Pen Productions is her company, and she's committed to accessibility. I'm committed to accessibility, but we still we had a ... she was my vendor so we had a contract. And we said, what the standard was and, you know, we said there was going to be testing three different times for my little website, by a cross-section of people.
So higher education settlements are pretty much the same. They have the elements that I just mentioned with the other settlements of best practices. In higher-ed technology, audit required, web and apps, we haven't talked too much about video, but video accessibility is huge. There's a lot of like that Netflix streaming case was captioning, a lot of education learning is happening by video now, has to be captioned. There's a lot on that, library systems, course materials, training is all in the higher ed settlements that you can read online, and having an accessibility tech coordinator in the IT department.
One thing about the higher ed settlements that are happening now ... getting my five minutes, okay, you know if you end up in a legal problem with the government, like the opposite Civil Rights Department of Ed and they're going to be looking over your shoulder. And one reason structured negotiations has been so great is that nobody wants anybody looking over their shoulders. Blind people don't want it, companies don't want it, the governments don't want it, we all know best on how to do this that fits with our corporate culture and the needs of disabled people.
So really, the message is, this law is in your pocket to tell your companies, let's not wait, let's not wait until we get the knock on the door. So if you want more law, they are higher ed updates at bit.ly/HigherEda11y. That's maintained by someone at University of Minnesota, she does a great job with all the higher ed.
You can sign up on my contact page for my email list, where I send out updates, very infrequently, but I do.
There's a blog by a defense firm that's called www.adatitleiii.com. That's where I rely on getting ... they do a very good job on the metrics. This is where I learned that there's 750 pending federal cases as of August on websites. 750 ... last year there were like 250.
I have my book for sale, I sell it basically at cost, which is thirty dollars, which is cheaper, way cheaper than Amazon or the ABA. It has stories, stories about Kelly and other people and has strategies it has accessibility. Whitney gave it a great review and the usability magazine earlier this year, recommending it for usability people, so I recommend it to you.
I can ... I have them and I can take cash, check or credit card. And please stay in touch with me. Think of me as someone, if you have a question, you know, you can find me on Twitter, you can find me on my contact page, you can send me an email directly at [email protected]. Take advantage of my website I really do it for you. I really do it for you guys and the disability community. Because the law is really active in this space and I feel we all have a right to put it in our pocket.
So, thank you. Thank you, Dennis. Appreciate you guys.
[Applause]
[Dennis]: What we're gong to do, were going to open this up for questions and answers. Before we get into that, we do have a copy of Lainey's book to give away. We'll do that right after Q&A. I'm still thinking up the question, so ask lots of questions. Ok so let me give this to you and please ask away, anyone who has any questions.
[Lainey]: Oh, we're going to wait for the mic, hold on ... Oops, I thought you were first. You'll be second. Go ahead.
[Attendee]: My question was, I was watching a podcaster webinar talking about the increase in lawsuits [indecipherable] As a ... I think it was [indecipherable] put together, and I sign up for a couple of their different webinars throughout the last year, so it's amazing how much ... some of that has changed, like from a year ago to now,
[Lainey]: Yes.
[Attendee]: one thing you didn't touch on is banking during your presentation. I wonder if you have any thoughts on that ... in aging population. The reason why is in general lawsuits ... [indecipherable] ... digital and ecommerce access of services and [indecipherable].
[Lainey]: Yeah, first of all, for those of you who don't know, Level Access is one of the consultants in this space, puts a really good information. I can really recommend them. Also WebAIM that was does a survey they also put out really good information. I'm hesitant ... You know if we weren't being live-streamed, I might say something different than I'm about to say.
But now I'm going to say ... hello out there in live stream land! I meant to say hello earlier. There's more lawsuits ... that's really all I can say. I mean ... it used to be when I did the updates, there'd be like four people I would call around the country and say, what's happening?
You know, like, and a few lawyers have done a phenomenal job in the space on higher ed and I know all the lawyers doing the voting cases and you, know I think what happened is, this became an area that courts and settlements so we created that foundation. For 15 years, we created that foundation, and that caused other people with other strategy ideas to come in.
And that's why I said earlier about the toolbox, you know, there are have been a couple lawyers, one in Arizona, that is subject to disbarment for not on web cases but on architectural cases. There are already systems in place to deal with people who may be miss... I'm not saying the Florida lawyers are, I'm not saying any of the web are, and the thing is, if I asked you, how many of you knew that Bank America committed to accessibility through structured negotiation, did any of you know that before tonight?
Yeah, see, when you mean, yeah blind people no, because but what happens is lawsuits get attention and attention gets action, so you are totally right that the senior population needs access and now that there's more attention, that could be one thing driving it. It's also that there's just more legal activity in the space. And there's more seniors. And that's a good thing for, to have in the pockets not so much a, see seniors ...the word seniors don't have a legal right under the ADA, but the truth is seniors become disabled because they have impairments that affect their lives and particularly seeing and hearing as well as you know when you have certain neurological things, yeah, so we call it seniors, but really it's a growing disability population, part of its languaging.
[Attendee]: Is it ok if I don't use a mic?
[Dennis]: We actually need the mic for the stream.
[Lainey]: I know, the mic wasn't that good.
[Attendee]: So, two questions, very quickly. One, if you are developing, so, I'm a front-end developer, we're developing and you are on a particular operating system and you have, you're meeting AA requirements for a particular browser, on a particular device, are you done? Or do you need to ... because that's where we are really struggling, because it's like, the screen readers don't all behave well, and what's interesting is that, it doesn't seem there are any ADA regulations about screen readers.
There's plenty about what we have to have on websites, so my question is first, if I secure myself, my site at double A, on Safari, on Mac, do I have to worry about Chrome? Do I have to worry about Firefox? Because it really can become quite cumbersome.
[Lainey]: Yeah, I have sympathy for the developers that it is not so easy that there's screen readers behave differently on different browsers. But, because accessibility is about people and people have the right, I mean, the way the ADA works, when we did the talking ATM cases ... here's why that initiative was successful. The one that we first did the ATMs we insisted on one talking ATM in every place. We would meet with them by the month and they would give us charts showing how many ATMs we never touched by a blind person.
So like what the hell, like we're spending all this money and we'd be like, well a blind person could be visiting their grandmother next week. It has to be in every place, because every place where you have ATMs and one of the Bank America higher up people like a light bulb went off. And he stood up in front of an ATM convention, he asked me if I would co-present with him and I said yes. And the convention wouldn't have me. They didn't want me, even though I have a kinder gentler law practice, I was still ... And he got up, his name was Bill Raymond, and he got up and he said this is a civil right of individual people and that's why we're doing it.
Let's stop counting how many people aren't doing it. So I thought of that when I asked your question, because, you know, most people who are ... most blind people that I know who are using computers, not phones, but computer aren't using a Mac with Safari. They're still using IE on a PC with JAWS. And, that's why the screenreader test, the survey is so important, because we see and yeah it's growing, NVDA is growing more, but it's not enough to say what ... I don't think it's enough to say one done, but the courts, you know, they have not gotten this deep in into it.
But if it was a case and the IE user on a PC went to court, it wouldn't, I don't think really help to say somebody else can use it. Because the person who wanted to use it couldn't use it. So that's a challenge.
[Dennis]: And let me just chime in there as a front-end web developer. If a screen reader or browser is not following the spec, the WCAG spec from the W3C, the guidance is, submit a bug request. And I can tell you, working for, a screen reader company, we're fixing those bugs. So, if Apple Safari, submit those as pull requests. I know Apple is quite good at responding to those. So, but I do understand your challenge outside of that.
[Attendee]: So, really quick, last question ... [indecipherable] ... isn't a screen reader responsible for ... [indecipherable] ... because that doesn't ... that I don't understand. Now if it's ... [indecipherable] ... that makes sense to me. And let me just say that I absolutely understand and support closed captioning. But, to me, why would the screen reader be responsible for ... [indecipherable] ... content?
[Lainey]: Ok, that's a good ... why would the distributor be responsible for buc ... produced content. So there is a ... don't forget that the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed by a Republican; it was a bipartisan effort. It's not just a one-sided thing. So there's a section in there that says if you are a bookstore you do not have to sell Braille books. Which is kind of what you're saying, like if you're selling books, you don't sell Braille books.
But with the movies, what happens is, you think, if Netflix had any control, there's another section the ADA and this is why the vendor in the Winn-Dixie case, the Winn-Dixie judge said it's Winn-Dixie responsibility to have their vendors deliver accessible products, because the Americans with Disabilities Act says you can't discriminate directly or through contracting or other means of administration, some legal blah blah.
But the truth is, you're the public entity putting the thing out, so they tried to get that case thrown out. I believe, don't quote me on that, even in webinars they don't quote me on this. I think they tried to get it thrown out on the Braille book exception that the movies were like books, but Netflix must have had enough control in the distribution where captioning could be injected at the points where they were either in control or had vendor control over to vendors, not the products. That's what ... I am not an expert on closed captioning. Yeah, I'm not a real expert on that, but the Netflix decision is a really good decision, it probably explains this.
Ok, we have time for a couple more questions.
[Dennis]: Just a couple more ...
[Attendee]: So, the structured settlements that you talked about, that's a pretty impressive list of companies ... referring to who are the individuals ... what is the persona ... [indecipherable] ... that you're talking about. [indecipherable] Is it always the law department that is handling those sorts of things, or does it have to come from the CEO ... [indecipherable] ... what is the genesis of something like that? How does that, in your experience, how does that even get done?
[Lainey]: Yeah, that's a good question. How does it, how does, how do we open the door and who do, whose door do we open? And we always write to the top lawyer. Because we're lawyers and there's sort of a legal ethics thing that lawyers aren't supposed to talk to the people in a company about legal claims. They're supposed to go through their lawyers. So we always go through the top lawyers. What that top lawyer does often it has to go to the very top.
And that eTrade thing, that the paralegal just as an example, has been a great champion, because she rounded up all the people. I mean, basically, what my role is, to say you need to get this done, who needs to be at the table? And I think it's really important not to take a cookie cutter approach to this, because every company is different. Every company has a corporate culture.
And the book by Jeff Kline about ... it's k-l-i-n-e, it's a good book, he talks about where to put the accessibility coordinator to have the most influence in the company. Or look at Microsoft, the difference it's made to have a have a CEO. But oftentimes, it's a whole panoply of people and some other companies they've been so small, there's just been like the Chief Information Officer has dealt with it.
So it isn't that really a one-size-fits-all answer, but the good thing about structured negotiation is we're able to say to the lawyer, you have a problem, and then the lawyer can round up the people who may be people like you and not just assign it to an associate to write a legal brief that the ADA doesn't cover it. That's what I like best about it that we don't have to be arguing about legal theories, instead we're talking about fixes.
[Dennis]: Last question.
[Lainey]: Whoops, we have two last questions. Ok, two last questions ... make them quick.
[Attendee]: Any good wins for video description, in higher ed?
[Lainey]: There haven't been any wins or losses on video description in higher ed. Many of the vendors that do the captioning also do the video description. And so I think some of that's being incorporated. And there's been a good settlement, Netflix did a subsequent settlement on video description and now you can look up Netflix videos and see which ones have have video description.
Ok, last question.
[Attendee]: Hi, I guess my question was, does the law treat a website that anyone can access differently than a website that you have to sign in to? Or even a website that is members only? Like you can't just sign up and log in, or are they all treated equal, as far as accessibility?
[Lainey]: They are treated equal to the extent that the ... the owner of the website is a public accommodation. So it has ... like if it was a website, it was an employment website, the rules for employment are slightly different. In employment, you have to accommodate individual employees. So if you had a blind employee, you would have to accommodate them.
Whereas with, if you're like all these financial, you have to log on to. So ... whether or not you have to log on that has nothing to do with it. If you're ... it's basically, again, what's in your pocket? If you're offering to the public, whether the pay, like we did, The Motley Fool, things started with people who had paid memberships with Motley Fool and they weren't getting the information they were paying for. Sometimes, people aren't getting the information that's free, so ... yeah ... Thank you.
[Voiceover]: Thank to our presenter, Lainey Feingold. Visit her on Twitter at LFLegal. Visit her website at lflegal.com.
Thank to our venue sponsor, American Bar Association. Visit them at americanbar.org. Thank to our live captions provider, ACS, Alternative Communication Services. Visit them online at acscaptions.com. Thanks to our live captions sponsor, McDonalds. We're loving it. Thank to our sponsor, Sticker Giant. Visit them online at stickergiant.com. Thank to our sponsor, Rosenfeld Media. Visit them online at rosenfeldmedia.com.
This has been a production of the Chicago Digital Accessibility & Inclusive Design Meetup. Visit us online at meetup.com/a11ychi Follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/a11ychi Watch recordings of our meetups on YouTube, at goo.gl/GfcU9A