Recent technological advances are sweeping the nation, changing the way people buy products and services. Self-service kiosks with automated, touch-screen interfaces now allow people to bank, shop and conduct a wide range of transactions independently, without the assistance of a clerk. This technology is fast becoming an integral part of our everyday lives.
Although these technologies can make our lives easier, Redbox, a video rental giant, has chosen to use self-service kiosks with touch-screen controls that exclude the blind from using its services. Blind Californians cannot use touch-screen kiosks that offer only visually based controls.
A class action lawsuit filed today in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California challenges Redbox’s inaccessible kiosks. The lawsuit is the first of its kind in the country, and is one of the many reasons that someone may need an attorney.
Plaintiffs are represented by Disability Rights Advocates (DRA), a non-profit disability rights legal center headquartered in Berkeley, California, that specializes in high-impact cases on behalf of people with disabilities. Plaintiffs are also represented by the Law Offices of Jay Koslofsky; Mr. Koslofsky is an experienced civil rights attorney.
Redbox has a major share of the video rental market. Redbox DVD rentals account for approximately 34% of the DVD rental market nationwide. According to Redbox, almost 60 million videos are rented from its kiosks nationally each month. Redbox kiosks can be found at thousands of businesses throughout California including Save Mart, which is a business that is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit.
For generations, blind and visually impaired people have watched and enjoyed movies as an ordinary part of daily life. Blind people with some remaining vision may watch films on their own or with sighted friends and family who can describe the details and actions of a film. In addition, many blind people enjoy watching dialogue-driven films.
Plaintiff Lisamaria Martinez is a legally blind resident of Union City, California. ”I love watching movies with my husband and son and would like to independently rent movies for my family at Redboxes,” Martinez said.
Plaintiff Joshua Saunders is a legally blind resident of El Cerrito, California, who enjoys watching movies with friends and family. “I’m not asking for the world here but simply for the ability to rent DVDs from Redboxes just like everyone else can,” Saunders said.
Redbox’s inaccessible touch-screen kiosks shut out a large and growing community of blind Californians. It is estimated that 100,000 Californians are legally blind and as the population continues to age, the number of adults with vision loss will increase.
The technology exists to make self-service kiosks accessible to the blind. Accessible ATMs and iPhones make use of tactile controls and/or screen reading software that enables blind people to use these devices.
“A lack of accessibility in newly emerging forms of commerce is a symptom of the overall growing technological divide that blind people experience when companies fail to build in accessible features at the onset,” said Bryan Bashin, LightHouse Executive Director/CEO.
“Technology is a double-edged sword. It has the power to enable millions, but it can disable many Americans far more than it enables them if accessibility is not built into technology at the beginning,” said Jay Koslofsky, plaintiffs’ attorney of the Law Offices of Jay Koslofsky.
“Redbox is shutting out thousands of Californians from its services because it refuses to make its technology accessible to blind consumers,” said Michael Nunez, plaintiffs’ attorney of Disability Rights Advocates.
About Disability Rights Advocates (DRA)
Disability Rights Advocates is a non-profit legal center which, for nearly twenty years, has specialized in high-impact class action litigation on behalf of people with all types of disabilities. DRA litigates nationally and has offices in New York City and Berkeley, California.
About Law Offices of Jay Koslofsky
Jay Koslofsky is an attorney in private practice with more than 30 years of experience. He specializes in civil rights cases and class action litigation.
blind people cant watch movies so dont sue REDBOX it will drive up the price
Hello Tony:
In your recent comment on the Redbox lawsuit you stated, “blind people cant watch movies so dont sue REDBOX it will drive up the price”
Your statement is incorrect for several reasons.
We blind people certainly do watch movies. While it is true that our experience with a particular motion picture may differ from yours, that doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy it. You wouldn’t say that people who don’t speak fluent Italian can’t appreciate opera, so why would you say that people who don’t see the way you do can’t appreciate the cinema? We enjoy movies, and that’s why we want the same access that you have to DVDs from Redbox kiosks.
Those of us who are blind or visually impaired obviously can appreciate the dialogue, the music and the sound effects of a good movie just as does anybody else. The vast majority of people who are classified as blind actually have some level of useable vision which allows them to see the images in movies to a certain extent as well. Just as captioning allows people with hearing impairments to follow the dialogue in movies that include this feature, a technology, known as audio description, which is becoming available on an increasing number of DVDs, provides verbal descriptions of the most important images in a film, wich provides a richer experience for visually impaired movie-goers.
Keep in mind that we belong to families, so even when we’re not renting DVDs just for ourselves, we still want to get them to enjoy with our families, and our friends, too.
It is doubtful that making Redbox kiosks accessible will place upward pressure on the price of their DVDs. Upgrading a Redbox device will require the addition of a telephone-style numeric keypad and a headphone jack, and updating the software to allow a blind person to communicate with the kiosk through the keypad instead of by touching the screen and routing the information shown on the screen to the headphone jack in an audible format. Bank ATMs and transit ticket machines all around the United States have been upgraded in just this way to make them accessible. This would constitute a one time modification, and the expense of this change would be recouped by the sale of millions of DVDs over the course of many years.
Curb cuts make getting around town easier for millions more people than just the wheelchair users for which they were originally installed; people with baby strollers, people with heavy luggage, people hauling heavy packages on hand trucks, etc. In just the same way, providing audio access to their kiosks will give Redbox access to millions of new customers; people with dyslexia or learning disabilities, people whose primary language isn’t English, people with limited hand dexterity who find it difficult to manipulate a touch screen interface, and yes, people experiencing vision loss, too.
Tony, don’t forget that you will stand an increasing chance of experiencing reduced vision as you age, so making these automatic kiosks accessible is in your long-term self-interest.