In this episode, we interview disability rights attorney Lainey Feingold about a wide range of topics, from how she got into accessibility and advocating for the rights of individuals with disabilties, to the broader trends we are seeing globally around accessibility laws and enforcement.
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Transcript
Chris: Welcome to the Accessibility Craft podcast, where we explore the art of creating accessible websites while trying out interesting craft beverages. This podcast is brought to you by the team at Equalize Digital, a WordPress accessibility company, and the proud creators of the Accessibility Checker plugin.
And now, on to the show.
Amber: Hello everybody, it’s Amber, and I’m here today with Chris.
Chris: Hello everybody, and I believe we have a special guest today. Lainey, would you like to introduce yourself to our audience?
Lainey: Yes. Hello. And thanks, Amber. Thanks, Chris, for having me. I’m Lainey Feingold. I’m a disability rights lawyer. My specialty, pretty much the only thing I know, is digital accessibility.
Been in the space since the mid 1990s and really glad to be here to chat with you.
Amber: Yeah, we are really excited to have you here today, Lainey. We’re going to talk a little bit about accessibility laws in the United States. And then we are also going to spend a bit of time teasing your keynote speech at WordPress Accessibility Day, which is coming up in just a couple of weeks.
And we’re very excited that you are the keynote speaker. So thank you for joining us.
Lainey: Yeah, of course.
Amber: And of course we always start every episode with a beverage. Chris, can you tell us what we’re drinking today?
Today’s Beverage
Chris: Yeah so Lainey requested something that was light on the sugar and the alcohol and maybe, maybe still, maybe bubbly.
And so I went back to A brand that I’m pretty familiar with from my time on the East coast, which is Spindrift and they’ve been doing these interesting non alcoholic seltzers that are flavored with just a little bit of fruit juice. And I found one that was because it’s just lime juice and mint in it, it has no calories at all and no additives or artificial sweeteners either.
And it’s just gonna, it’s, it’s called Nojito. So it’s supposed to be a mojito, sans rum and simple syrup. So hopefully, hopefully tasty and we can crack these open here and don’t worry about the can crack going on the mic. We can do it.
Amber: Yeah. Is this one that you’ve you haven’t tried this one before, right Chris?
Because we’re not supposed to have tried them before.
Chris: No, no, this is not one that I have had previously. When, when I was on the East Coast, Spindrift only made like sodas, like sweet, with sweet fruit juice and now they’re doing all sorts of different stuff. We’ve actually tried a different Spindrift recently, their Blood Orange, which was pretty good.
So this is a totally new flavor. I’m going to give mine a sip here.
Amber: Yeah, and Lainey, this is very non technical. You don’t have to be a beverage connoisseur, but we just, we just taste it and we talk about if we like it, if we would buy it again, if we would recommend it. If anything stands out and it’s okay to also say you don’t like it because we’ve had drinks on this episode on this podcast where everyone was like, no.
Lainey: No, it’s good.
I, y’all asked me, you know, did I want alcohol or not alcohol, but I’m here in California and it’s the middle of the day. So yes, probably any time of day I would have said no alcohol, but yeah, no, it’s good. I like things without sugar and…
Amber: Actually, this has a good lime flavor. Sometimes with seltzers, I feel like you don’t get as much of a fruit flavor or it’s very like subtle, but this has a good, strong flavor. I like it.
Chris: The other thing I’ll say with things that have a mint flavor, usually the mint ends up tasting a little bit overpowering or artificial to me. Like they’re using an extract, like a flavor extract or some sort of additive to achieve the mint flavor. But this just, feels like I don’t know, like you would taste in a cucumber mint water or something. Like it’s a very clean, natural tasting soda. I appreciate it.
Lainey: Okay, good. Here’s the, I know I always check ingredients of things and it just says carbonated water, lime juice, and mint doesn’t say mint extract. So good to go on the beverage.
Amber: Well, good. Then you, you would enjoy it some more because I know we sent you 24 of them.
We, we don’t usually send that many. But oddly sometimes with shipping it’s like, that actually was less money than , so…
Lainey: I know. I said to my husband, wait, there’s a box here that says heavy from Amazon. I didn’t order it. Did you order it? But yeah, so thanks for sending it and thanks for having me on your podcast.
Lainey’s Journey Into Digital Accessibility Law
Chris: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And we can sip these while we ask you a whole bunch of questions. Amber, do you want to get us started?
Amber: Yeah. So I know we were really interested in hearing a little bit more about your background as an attorney and what got you interested in not just accessibility law, but specifically digital accessibility law, because I I’m sure there are lots of people who practice that, but you are one of the voices that a lot of us know the most. So is there a specific thing that drew you into this practice or has kept you here?
Lainey: Well, one thing is I think that people know me the most because I do a lot on social media. There is a community of disability rights lawyers who practice digital accessibility, but I always like to say they’re busy practicing.
They’re busy, you know, creating the law that I like to report on to the community. So, I am not the only person out there, so that’s good news. You know, there’s all sorts of ways to start your journey. Believe it or not, I’m going to my 50th high school reunion in October. And when I think back on high school, I like did an internship with the ACLU.
And I used to like, go to the law library in my town and read the old books. So, maybe it started there, but usually I say it started when I was a traditional civil rights lawyer doing race and gender cases. I represented labor unions and I was in a job. I really liked the job. I got fired from the job, but it was like, whoa, what happens now?
And there was an opening in a disability rights nonprofit in Berkeley, California called DREDF. And it was a four month opening, which I went to, ended up staying for four years. During that time, I was exposed to digital accessibility. More important, I was exposed to blind people who had issues around accessibility on ATMs, which is where I started, and buses and, you know, the whole range of things, but the digital part really started with ATMs.
Because in the mid nineties, there were no ATMs blind people could use in the United States. The ADA was a couple of years old. We could have filed the lawsuit, but instead we reached out to banks and said, will you work with us and blind customers and try to figure out a solution to ATMs, which worked.
And towards the end of that, one of our blind clients who were all early adopters, great tech people said, okay, Lainey. And there was a team of lawyers. We got talking ATMs, which is what we have now in the United States, but there’s this new thing called online banking. And if we don’t make that accessible, then we’re back to square one, having no access to our own money, no independent access, no privacy.
So in 97, 98, we approached Bank America and said, can we work on this new thing? New to me for sure. Online Banking. And we did, and it was successful and we didn’t have to file a lawsuit. And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.
Amber: That’s the structured negotiation. Is, is that what you’re talking about as an alternative to filing a lawsuit, where you have attorneys that guide you through a conversation between two parties? Is that essentially what that is?
Lainey: Yeah, we we didn’t file the lawsuits against the banks. Our letters were written to Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citibank. And when they agreed all to do talking ATMs and Bank America signed the first website accessibility agreement with us, in 2000, almost 25 years ago. We were like, whoa, is that just luck? Or did we do something that we could do again to avoid the expense and stress and enemy creation of lawsuits? And we decided, yeah, we should, we should make this a thing. Now, of course, this is an abbreviated version of the whole story, which I tell in my book, which is called Structured Negotiation, The Winning Alternative to Lawsuits, but basically that’s how it happened.
We just kept doing it, and the more we did it, the more collaborative the process became, the more we understood why it worked, and that’s, you know, what I like to share, because it doesn’t just work with, legal claims, the idea of being collaborative, centering disabled people. These are all things that any advocate can use to advance access.
Becoming an Influential Figure Through Blogging and Social Media
Chris: So you, you mentioned that you’re, you’re one of the most known disability rights attorneys because of your, that you’re out there, right? You’re sharing this information with everyone. And I think part of the reason why it took off is you do such a great job making it really easy for non legal professionals like myself and many others to actually understand and follow this stuff really easily.
And thank you for that, by the way. But, can you tell us how you got into that? Was there like a particular thing that got you into blogging and sharing all of this information online in such a digestible way?
Lainey: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I think the whole social media part started with the book.
The book first came out in 2016 and the second edition came out in 2021. And the first edition was published by the American Bar Association, which I never really liked because, I really wrote the book for the accessibility community, the disability community, for lawyers who want to be collaborative. So I knew I had to do a lot of the marketing myself.
Now I should say, call myself Law Office of Lainey Feingold, but it’s just me in my upstairs bedroom, which you see where I have been for the last, you know, close to 30 years. And it just kind of evolved that so much of legal language that I took for granted because I had been a lawyer for 10 years before I got involved in disability rights.
It’s just really complicated. And the abbreviations we’re all so familiar with. And so just gradually, gradually, I tried to make my writing digestible for people who weren’t lawyers. And also it was like a real give and take. I feel at this, you know, when I started my, I would say my work community was lawyers.
But now I would say my primary community is the overlapping accessibility disability community. So I got sort of, even though I practice law and I am a lawyer, I just saw like your WordPress community as an example of my audience. And so if you want to be a good speaker, you have to speak the language of your audience.
Then on my website, I have a website, LFLegal.com, and I have a wonderful WordPress accessibility developer, designer, who did my website, Natalie MacLees, who I think is one of the founders of WordPress Accessibility Day, originally. And I think she might be even speaking this year.
Amber: She is speaking this year as well. Yeah.
Lainey: And so she’s built my site and takes care of it for me. And, I want to be a AAA, WCAG AAA site, and I have been since 2. 1 or 2. 0. And part of that is you have to have a summary at ninth grade reading level. For anything written above. So that used to be a thing on my website to say, I want to meet WCAG AAA. Here’s this summary at ninth grade reading level. And over time I realized everybody wants a summary in plain language. You know, it has nothing to do with WCAG. It has nothing to do with accessibility requirements. So Natalie changed the layout of it. It doesn’t say anymore. This is because of WCAG.
It just says, here’s what’s on the page. And having to write the summaries helps me write the social media posts. And now, truth be told, I’m trying to see if AI can help me a little with those summaries, because I never try, I never give it a prompt and have it, oh, this is what I’m going to post, but I have given a prompt that gives me a good start.
Amber: Yeah, or something like, here’s the entire blog post I wrote, can you summarize it in eighth grade language or something like that?
Lainey: In four sentences. Yes.
Amber: Oh, and you tell it four sentences.
Lainey: Well, because it’s supposed to fit in this little nice teal colored box. It’s like the theme of my website that says, I think it says on this page and it’s at the top of every post. And so that really helps with the social media stuff and. I used to do a lot on Twitter before current ownership of Twitter, and that had a limited character count. So, I think like with everything, if you have intentionality and awareness of it, you can do it. And so that’s sort of how I became a person. And also I feel like a debt, a huge debt of gratitude to the disability community who supported me, the blind community, especially the accessibility world, who’s taught me so much that I feel like, not just I should, but I want to give back in a way that. Let’s people understand the legal space.
Amber: Well, I know we’ve really appreciated it as like me personally, as an agency, like freelancer growing up and growing a business, working in web. And because you know, when you just get the, the law or even a court case, the big PDF with sometimes hundreds of pages. It’s, it’s hard. So, so thank you. I have to say, I know Chris said it, but I think on behalf of everybody in the WordPress community, I think we all really appreciate that you summarize those things for us.
And I will say your, your summaries on your blog posts actually inspired a feature in our Accessibility Checker plugin, which is we have the same thing where people can add it and it will check their reading level and say, hey, maybe you need to have a little summary because I appreciated that so much on your website. I found it so useful.
Lainey: Yeah, well, I should really give a shout out to Jamie Knight who many of you know in London And he’s the first person to tell me that I think one day I was feeling like super frustrated about the summary So I put on social media like does anyone ever care about this or read it?
And he was the first one to say I always like to know right up front What am I going to be reading about so I can decide if I want to read more about it? And I think that’s, that’s the other thing is the law is typically presented as a hammer and a source of fear. And I personally, based on my experience all these years, do not think that’s a good motivator.
So, I like to share it and also share it kind of in a package of this is what it means for disability inclusion, and this might be a setback over here, but big picture, everything’s going in the forward direction, so, yeah.
Lainey’s Experiences with WordPress
Amber: So I’m curious, as a WordPress user, do you, and it’s totally fine to just say no, but I’m curious if you, if you follow how WordPress, the open source, like the project of WordPress is doing at creating something that is more usable for people. Do you ever follow that or have you noticed if the blogging platform is doing things that you think are good and are making it more usable or not so good, do you have any thoughts about that?
Lainey: Well, I have to hearken back to Natalie MacLees for this because I’m not sure she had, I do all the posting myself unless it’s a complicated legal document. But I know how to upload the PDFs and I know how to make, you know, do the alt text. And I also use the editor where you have to put in your own, like I put in the headings myself. I put the H2 and the H3, but I don’t, it’s, that is so easy for me. And I’m not a technical person. I can do, I know like a few tiny, you know, I can do headers. I can do ordered lists. I can do, you know, unordered lists, whatever they’re called. So I don’t know how much of that she builds special for me in the back, or that’s just, you know, out of the box WordPress, but I do know that I’ve had WordPress the whole time and if she can make it, easy for someone like me, then I think WordPress at least has the ability for all developers to make it easy for their clients.
Because I really like doing the backend myself because I feel like I, I just learn more. So now if I look at a website, I know are there headings and are they coded properly? So I’ve had WordPress from the beginning before Natalie, I got my first site in 2008 and that was
Amber: So early days of WordPress.
Lainey: Yeah, and there were hardly any people, and I’m embarrassed to say I cannot remember the name of the person, but he’s out of the business now, so I don’t feel that bad. There were hardly any people to do it, and he was recommended to me, and yeah, so I’ve sort of been loyal to WordPress, but I don’t know how much is WordPress out of the box versus having people like Natalie.
Chris: There’s a popular saying that WordPress is people. You know, it’s, it’s the people of WordPress that make WordPress great. And not necessarily just the platform.
Lainey: Oh, perfect. That’s definitely been the case for me. No, Natalie, I just can’t recommend her enough. Actually, I recommend her all the time and that’s why she’s so busy, which I’m happy for because she’s just, you know, so responsive.
The first person I had, I always felt, and I wasn’t as experienced. I just always felt like I was doing something wrong and he was always yelling at me for wanting this, that, or the other thing. I’m like, Natalie, and, and, you know, so many others in the space are just so kind and want to bring people along.
And yeah.
Amber: No, I think, I think, you know, this really ties for me a lot, just with the spirit of accessibility and thinking about how as developers, we really have the ability to build something that is easy for our customers or clients to use, whether that’s in the back end of WordPress website or on the front end of WordPress website. And it really makes a huge difference. For people, if you put that effort in, it makes it a positive experience to engage with the website versus a frustrating one.
Lainey: Oh yeah. And another thing Natalie does, I don’t know if this is part of WordPress, but it’s always like on the backend for me. If I have something I, like, I can never remember how to resize a photo or, you know, things like that.
She’ll make me a little video. She’ll have the WordPress screen up. She’ll like circle where I should be looking and they’re just all there so I can go back to them. Oh yeah. I know how to do that.
Amber: Yeah, no, that is fabulous. Well, I know we wanna ask you some questions that are not legal advice, but more about the law and looking ahead to your talk.
But we’re gonna take a short commercial break and we will be right back.
Brought to you by Accessibility Checker
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Amber: And we’re back.
The Acceleration of Digital Accessibility Awareness and Legal Requirements
Chris: So you’ve been in the accessibility world for considerably longer than any of the three founders of Equalize Digital. And once I started paying attention to accessibility, this is just me personally, I started seeing it everywhere. And I’m curious for someone who just has better, longer perspective than me, if we’re actually seeing an acceleration in accessibility as a trend or as a focal point, in the world because that’s what we’re seeing. And I’m wondering what your impression has been just over the last two to three years, if accessibility is becoming more or less of a focus or the same?
Lainey: I would definitely say more. I am an optimist and I think kind of to be in this work, we have to be optimists. And I think there’s some real concrete reasons for that right now. Like the European Accessibility Act is getting a lot of attention and that’s going, you know, the first set of deadlines happens this June and it was first enacted a couple of years ago and every European Union country member state is enacting their own laws.
So there’s a lot of conversation about that because it doesn’t just apply to organizations in the EU. It’s anyone putting products and services that are covered into the market. So there’s that. Then back closer to home, we have the Department of Justice finally issuing the regulations that require WCAG, meeting WCAG for state and local governments.
Now I have, if anyone’s heard me over the years, I’m always saying regulations matter, but don’t wait. I have some great slides of people like waiting, waiting for a train or waiting, waiting.
Amber: Until the very end.
Lainey: Yeah. And you know, the Americans with Disabilities Act and other U. S. laws have such a strong foundation for inclusion, for non discrimination, for effective communication. Why the cases require accessibility even before, even without regulations. And it’simportant to have regulations because it just normalizes it and there’s less discussion. So that finally was passed. First introduced, tried to get regulations in 2010, finally got them in 2024 for state and local government. They’ll be kicking into effect in 26 and 27. So there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of happening. And I also think that the disability community is demanding access. You know, these laws don’t just fall from the sky. They’re the result of advocacy, organizing, protesting by the disabled community. And it’s like enough already.
You know, we have the, the WebAIM does their million, their survey of a million websites. It shows all these violations and so, yeah, I would agree with you whether you’ve been in a long time or short time, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of focus.
Amber: Do you think that that the rulemaking that came out this spring for state and local governments, do you think that that’s a sign that we might see similar rulemaking for all ADA covered private entities, too, in the future? Specifying WCAG?
Lainey: . So, you know, some people say, well, let’s not politicize digital accessibility, but it is a civil right and therefore it is politicized. Because all these things, when we talk about Department of Justice or Health and Human Services has regulations and Department of Education. These are all people that are presidential appointees. The Justice Department is not a building. It’s people in the building. So we need, you know, good, strong people in the buildings.
I, I, Amber, I just don’t know what to say. I mean, it’s a, it’s a little disappointing title three, the private sector part of the ADA wasn’t already included, but like I say, the ADA is so strong that you can’t discriminate and you have to effectively communicate and in the digital age, there’s no way to meet the ADA obligations without accessibility.
So, and, you know, WCAG is the standard globally, so, this is a place where I say I’d like to see regulations, I wouldn’t gamble on it, and I wouldn’t wait for them.
Accessibility Lawsuits and Contract Law
Amber: But they might not be needed also. I think it seems like when you write about some of the cases that are out there, it doesn’t frequent, they don’t frequently get dismissed unless they could prove that, well, that person didn’t actually mean to, or never had real intent to use the website, but otherwise, if they did have real intent to use the website, even without it specifying WCAG in the settlements, they always say they’ll meet WCAG.
Lainey: Yeah, I mean, there’s still some legal issues out there, like for the private sector, if you don’t have a physical place, if you’re web only, you know, the U. S. is a big country and the federal law is interpreted differently in different parts of the country. So some parts say, oh, you have to have a physical place, but nobody’s building a website just for Texas, for example, you know, or just for Alabama.
So to me, talk about what to communicate to non lawyers, it doesn’t so much matter to me, this idea of nexus that in some places you have to say, well, the website’s connected to a physical place. Like if you have a store and people can go to the website to choose products to pick up, that would create a nexus.
Some parts of the country say if you don’t have that, if you’re pure, web only, then the ADA doesn’t apply, but if you have a website that goes all over the country, many other parts of the country say web only does apply, so, yeah.
Chris: And is this why these suits are getting concentrated in just a few states, typically?
Lainey: Partly that, and partly that the Americans with Disabilities Act doesn’t allow the disabled person bringing the lawsuit to collect any money. It provides for a fix, and it provides for the lawyers to get paid, but some states, California, New York in particular, have laws that say if you violate our state discrimination laws, you may have to pay money.
And, you know, I think you’ve heard me speak on some percentage of these cases are what I consider not to be very ethical and are mostly focused on the money part, and therefore you see them in states where there’s money available.
Amber: Yeah. So I know we’re, you know, all of us who are accessibility advocates and work in this space, We’re all very pro this and we think, you know, like the European Accessibility Act and the deadline in June that’s going to force e commerce to become accessible.
You know, I personally am like, that’s good. They haven’t chosen to do it on their own. Maybe they needed a law to force them to do it. But I, I talked to a lot of freelancers and small agency owners, especially ones who work on really small budgets. And, and they’re trying to figure out how does this shape what we do, especially in WordPress, where they’re not really building all of the website.
A lot of times they’re, Purchasing plugins or themes and just sort of assembling them for people. And I know you can’t give any legal advice, so we’re not asking for that. But I am curious if you have any thoughts on how freelancers or agencies maybe should discuss this with their customers or things that they might want to include in what they’re doing?
Lainey: Yeah, that, well, that’s kind of a two part question in terms of what they can do, especially with small sites. I mean, you guys are builders, so you know more than me, but WordPress has their accessible themes. There are companies like your own that offer accessible services to WordPress developers.
There’s so much free information about accessibility. I mean, you’re doing 24 hours of free accessibility information. WordPress Accessibility Day and Inclusive Design 24, ID24 does free 24, that’s coming up later in September or maybe next week.
Amber: Yeah, I think that will be out by the time this podcast airs. So we can definitely include a link because that’s on YouTube and anyone can watch those videos free. You don’t have to register. So we can include that in our show notes.
Lainey: Yeah, I think that would be good because there’s so much information. I myself use accessibility insights from Microsoft, which is a free plugin on the browser.
So you can see, I mean, I like what Microsoft does not to say about what anybody else does, but just because they don’t just tell you what the problem is, but they tell you how to fix it and why you should fix it. Because once people understand the why of this whole thing, I think that’s key to advancing accessibility.
If you just think of it as a legal requirement or something no one will use or just some burden that nobody cares about. Then it’s hard to motivate yourself to do it. I mean, that’s what happened with me with that ninth grade summary until I really saw the why I did it because whatever, but I wasn’t that happy doing it.
So, and the second, the second part of your question about talking to your client, you know, if you’re an agency talking to the clients, That’s key, you know, there is a real what can I call it? Just a lack of good contracting around accessibility. Like if you have a contract with someone about a website, you have to mention what the accessibility standard is, how it’s going to be tested, who’s responsible for fixing things that come up afterwards, will there be additional money, you know, all the things that could happen should be talked about.
Not in an adversarial way, but you know, accessibility is a thing. It’s something I care about. We’re going to get, deliver you an accessibility site, or we’re going to deliver you a site, except you’re going to be responsible for these parts or whatever. Just, just have conversations. You have to normalize accessibility, just like securities in the code. What happens with a privacy breach? There’s probably something in the language. Well, if there’s a privacy breach, who’s responsible? So, it has to be like on the table, not as a fear thing, but hey, this is an issue and here are some of the things that come up.
Amber: And then I’m guessing then, the advice would be for all of our people,
agency freelance people who are listening to this, is that you need to have an attorney who is familiar with writing contracts and go to them and say, hey, I need to make sure I have language in here that addresses accessibility.
Lainey: Yes. And the truth is, is that, you know, when I first started out, we used to say, don’t just say a sentence that says, I’ll deliver a website that complies with all laws. That’s not enough. So your lawyer may not, like, you may have to bring the accessibility part to your lawyer who knows the contract part and make sure everything’s in there because, you know, this is one of my sort of pet peeves is that the legal profession doesn’t know enough about accessibility, even though it’s an ethical legal requirement to be able to communicate with your clients and to not discriminate. So yeah, follow the best practices and see how you can get those put into your agreement. That’s what I would offer as non legal advice. That’s what I would do.
Amber: Our attorneys actually told us that we should never promise that compliance with laws. We, we offer Web Content Accessibility Guideline conformance, but he’s like, you’re not an attorney and you’re not a judge. How are you going to tell someone this complies with laws? And I was like, that’s probably a good point. I am not an attorney.
Lainey: Well, I also like that. Well, I am an attorney and I like that because, the more specific you can be, don’t be afraid of specifics. You know, for the people buying the websites, I’d say, what, what do you, or I think even with the agreement I had with Natalie, it was written down, this will be tested by blind people using a screen reader. The last thing we want to do is over promise because that’s where we get into trouble with the overlay companies. And you know, they, they over promise. They say, we’re going to make you an accessible site. And yeah, specific as you can be, especially on the testing part, before you deliver it, how’s it going to be tested?
Amber: And that should be written out in like the statement of work.
Lainey: I haven’t written those contracts, but I have written some articles, I think, on the kind of language, and I, this is telling me I probably should write something, like, best practice for contract language. I think we all need, I think we all need that if it’s not out there. Or maybe you can get your lawyers to write that.
Amber: Yeah, I should ask them.
Chris: Yeah, we’re actually working right now on a not, on a not legal advice best practices for things you should consider including in your contract right now. I think, I think our marketing specialist, Paola, is actually working on writing that this week.
Amber: Based on advice from our attorneys, we’re not just making this stuff up.
Lainey: Well, you know, I I did some consulting with Disability In, which is a nonprofit that works with corporations on disability inclusion, and they have a project called Procure Access. which I was instrumental in getting off the ground and writing stuff. You can go to DisabilityIn.org and it’s one of their, what we do dropdowns and they have a lot of good resources.
Now they’re mostly designed for bigger organizations, but talking about putting it in the contract language and the building blocks of accessible procurement. How do you really make it so that, and procurement sounds like a word only for big companies, but no matter what your size, if you’re having a contract, if you’re buying licensing something, you’re procuring.
So, I think that’s a good resource.
Chris: And with these things, it seems like there’s really two ways that the pendulum could swing. There’s Equalize Digital side, where we are highly specific and provide tons of information in our contracts and statements of work about what we’re making accessible to what level, et cetera, what’s included. What isn’t. On the other side, we’ve seen instances where organizations will literally do the opposite and provide almost no information and just say, we’re not doing it. And we will not guarantee it. It’s not part of the project, et cetera. And I’m wondering again, in the not legal advice category of things, if you just have any high level thoughts about that as a practice?
Lainey: Well, you know, I haven’t, like, seen it in action, I haven’t seen what the results are, so I’m not sure I can speak to that particular question, but it is a huge red flag for anyone listening to this podcast, as well as WordPress Accessibility Day, to read every contract you put your signature on, because, you know, often times it’s legalistic.
And it’s the so called small print, but if you’re about to sign a contract where the person building your website says, we’re not responsible for any accessibility, that could really heighten your responsibility as the purchaser of the website.
Any business to business contract, any, you know, If you don’t want to read every tiny thing, search for WCAG, accessibility, what, you know, and see what you’re saying, because you put your name on some piece of paper, that’s like, standing on a mountaintop and announcing, you know, I just let the plugin provider off the hook about accessibility.
So, you know, you really got to know what you’re signing and you got to look for people who do create accessibility, who believe in accessibility, who will, you know, give you a roadmap and say, if you have accessibility problems, or if your clients have accessibility problems, let us know, here’s our process for remediation.
Because we all know there’s going to be problems down the road, no matter how committed people are. But the trick is to be transparent and honest about how those problems are going to be fixed and make sure it’s clear in any contract, whether internal business to business or external business to customer.
Amber: Yeah. I know. I definitely would prioritize choosing a plugin, that says, we might not be perfect, but we’re trying to do accessibility over one that literally says in their terms of service, we’re not, we’re never going to be accessible.
Lainey: Yeah, there’s so many things that are bad about, you know, not legal advice, but bad, like, really? You want to be a company who says that? You’re not even going to try? You’re not even like, It’s just like, yeah.
Amber: I think it’ll be interesting to see with the European Accessibility Act how some of that shakes out, particularly in the e commerce space because there are so many vendors that get involved and even outside of WordPress, you have the payment processors and that, you know, like Stripe is one where the credit card fields, they come from Stripe. They’re embedded on the website, but they’re coming from Stripe, right? So there’s a lot of vendors, I think, in that space that may have to adjust their tune on accessibility in the next few years.
Lainey: Well, as I said to someone I know who’s involved in the, very heavily in the European Accessibility Act, I said, don’t blow this, because this law is so important.
You know, it mainstreams accessibility. It says you’re, we’re going to treat it like a market factor, just like you can’t sell unsafe products. You can’t sell things that aren’t accessible. So, you know, let’s get that to work as a model. It’s like very exciting.
Lainey’s WP Accessibility Day 2024 Keynote
Amber: Yeah, maybe we’ll have something move that direction here too.
So, I know we could probably talk about accessibility laws all day. It’s probably what you do all day, but I really want to, before we close out, to spend a few minutes looking ahead to your keynote at WordPress Accessibility Day which is coming up in about two weeks from when this podcast episode is airing.
So of course, we don’t want to give too much away, but what can people look forward to in your keynote?
Lainey: Oh, well, I’m going to try to cram a lot of information into the time allotted. So there’s that. I do like to, like we talked about earlier, present everything in a way people can understand. You don’t have to be a lawyer. You don’t have to act like a lawyer. So there’s that. I want to talk about what’s on the horizon. There’s some very creative use of the law for, you know, we all know the ADA or Section 508, but there’s, there’s some interesting things going on where people are using the law to say, hey, if you’re selling an accessibility product, you can’t lie about what it does. That’s bad business practice. So I’m excited to share about that. And I like my slides. I try to have really good images and in the background, I have jumping dolphins because that’s my spirit animal. I like to say, you don’t have to be a shark to advocate for accessibility, you can be a dolphin instead.
And I like to get that theme across too. So I’m really looking forward to being with you and thanks for the opportunity.
Chris: I love the shark versus dolphin thing. Can I just say, that’s wonderful. I really like it. All right. Well, thank you so, so, so much for joining us, for answering our ridiculous questions that keep trying to pull you into offering legal advice.
And you probably feel like you’re doing like an obstacle course over there. We really appreciate everything you do and your willingness to share information with the community. Thank you so much for being here.
Lainey: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Amber: Yeah, so for everyone who is listening, WordPress Accessibility Day is October 9th through 10th.
You can register and attend totally for free. You do have to register though, because we use Zoom webinars, because they have a really great separate American Sign Language interpretation view. We are going to have sign language interpretation, we’re going to have live captioning, so you have to register to get invited to the Zoom webinars.
So go to 2024.WPAccessibility.day and you can register for free before October 9th and 10th. Lainey, before we sign off, how can people follow you? What’s the best place to find you online?
Lainey: The best place is LinkedIn. I’m the only Lainey Feingold. But that’s good. My name is spelled L A I N E Y F E I N G O L D. Sad to say, I do have a mailing list.
Sign up on my website, which is LFLegal.com. Well, that part’s good. The sad to say part is I have not sent an email to the list. in 2024. So I aim to do better next year, but for now I write articles on the website. You can find them, but the best way to find out what’s happening fast is on LinkedIn.
Amber: Oh, you know, you should talk to Natalie about getting your email list connected to your RSS feed. So every time you publish a new article, it just automatically sends an email without anyone having to do anything. Just an idea.
Lainey: Just an idea. And a good one at that. Yes. Thank you.
Amber: So, thank you again, and we’ll see you in a couple weeks at WordPress Accessibility Day.
Lainey: Okay. Thank you.
Chris: Thanks for listening to Accessibility Craft. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe in your podcast app to get notified when future episodes release.
You can find Accessibility Craft on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. And if building accessibility awareness is important to you, please consider rating Accessibility Craft five stars on Apple Podcasts. Accessibility Craft is produced by Equalize Digital and hosted by Amber Hinds, Chris Hinds, and Steve Jones.
Steve Jones composed our theme music. Learn how we help make thousands of WordPress websites more accessible at EqualizeDigital.com.