Seminar: Equal access in the digital age, lessons from the US disability rights movement

The AHRCentre, PIAC and the Digital Gap Initiative are proud to present a seminar with US disability rights lawyer Lainey Feingold.

Date: 14 November 2017

Time: 5:30-7pm

Venue: Ashurst Australia, Level 11, 5 Martin Place, Sydney

RSVP: Here, for catering purposes

Disability rights advocates in the US are pushing to make the digital world accessible to everyone. Talking ATMs, accessible websites and mobile apps, talking prescription labels, audio description, and accessible health care and financial information have all benefited from an approach pioneered and developed by Lainey Feingold, entitled Structured Negotiation.

At the seminar, Lainey will discuss her 20 years of collaboration to advance disability civil rights and how US strategies could be used in Australia. She will also bring the audience up to date on what is happening with US digital accessibility court cases, laws, and regulations. Websites are global, tech companies are global and digital advocacy is global too.

Lainey Feingold is a US disability civil rights lawyer, author and public speaker. She has represented blind people and their organizations across the US since 1995 on issues including accessible websites and mobile apps, talking ATMs, talking prescription labels, and accessible pedestrian signals. Her book, Structured Negotiation, A Winning Alternative to Lawsuits, was published by the American Bar Association (ABA) in 2016. It tells the story of the dispute resolution process she pioneered that avoids lawsuits in favour of win-win solutions to complex legal issues. Lainey and her clients have used Structured Negotiation with some of the largest organisations in the United States to protect and advance the rights of blind people to access digital information and other technologies. The book can be purchased on the night (limited copies available). For readers with print disabilities, Structured Negotiation is available in epub format through the ABA, or with enhanced typesetting enabled in the ebook version from  Amazon or on Bookshare.

*For screen reader users, we recommend using the Firefox browser to RSVP on the Eventbrite website – or please email [email protected] register your interest.

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