Tag Archive

ADA

Listen to our Panel on the future of the Americans with Disabilities Act

Listen to our Panel on the future of the Americans with Disabilities Act

If you missed it, do not fear. The panel we hosted on the Future of the Americans with Disabilities Act is up on our YouTube channel.

Justice Shorter

Disaster Protection Advisor National Disability Rights Network – Protection and Advocacy for People with Disabilities While earning her MA in Sustainable Development: International Policy & Management, Justice authored three separate inclusion guides for the U.S. State Department and produced multiple people-centered projects via internships with The Hunger Project, World Learning and Women Enabled International. Justice also interned within the White House Office of Public Engagement & Intergovernmental Affairs where she focused on disability outreach efforts, social inclusion policies and federal agency engagement.

Chancey Fleet

Chancey is one of our own: becoming the newest member of the LightHouse board in 2019. In her day job, Chancey is an Assistive Technology Coordinator, Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library, New York Public Library . One of her initiatives in this position is to work with institutions like Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute to teach people who are blind or have low vision to learn programming code. She also does a lot of work in the arena of translating spatial concepts into a tactile form.

Jim Barbour

Jim Barbour has put his computer programming skills to great use over the years, taking jobs with Qualcomm, Google and Yahoo, recently completing an overseas assignment in Ireland. Jim says that the ADA needs to be applied more to education and believes more could be done with it to nudge up the 30% unemployment of working-age people who are blind or have low vision.

We plan to host more discussions like this one, so if you have any suggestions, let us know by emailing: info@lighthouse-sf.org.

Join LightHouse to discuss the future of the Americans with Disabilities Act

Join LightHouse to discuss the future of the Americans with Disabilities Act

This week 30 years ago, legislation expanding the rights of Americans with Disabilities was enacted. To mark this historic event, we have invited a panel of eminent speakers, all blind, to share their thoughts, predictions and wish-lists for the next 30 years of the ADA. This is a chance to celebrate all the ADA has opened the door to achieving, and it’s a chance to hear peoples’ ideas on how it must change and how it should be expanded to better serve blind people and people with intersecting disabilities for the next three decades or more.

This promises to be a lively discussion, with a chance for comments and questions from the community.

Panel Speakers

Jim Barbour

Jim, who attended the University of Colorado, has built a 30-year career as a Computer Systems Engineer, including working at Google, Qualcomm, and Yahoo. He does extensive volunteer work as a community organizer and holds several board positions in the National Federation of the Blind. He is currently working to keep blind people in the San Francisco Bay Area connected during the pandemic through social calls and providing information on advocacy and community resources.

Chancey Fleet

Chancey is one of our own: becoming the newest member of the LightHouse board in 2019. In her day job, Chancey is an Assistive Technology Coordinator at the Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library at the New York Public Library. One of her initiatives in this position is to work with institutions like the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute to teach people who are blind or have low vision to learn programming code. She also does a lot of work in the arena of translating spatial concepts into tactile form.

Justice Shorter

Justice is a Disaster Protection Advisor at the National Disability Rights Network. While earning her Master’s in Sustainable Development: International Policy & Management, Justice authored three separate inclusion guides for the U.S. State Department and produced multiple people-centered projects via internships with The Hunger Project, World Learning and Women Enabled International. Justice also interned within the White House Office of Public Engagement & Intergovernmental Affairs where she focused on disability outreach efforts, social inclusion policies and federal agency engagement.

When:  Friday July 31 from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. via Zoom.

To RSVP and receive the Zoom details for this one-off event, please email Andrea Vecchione at AVecchione@lighthouse-sf.org.

Does Your Movie Theater Offer Audio Description?

photo: a still from Netflix's Daredevil in which a woman reads Daredevil the newspaper

Movie theaters around the country are increasingly under a legal mandate to accommodate blind and visually impaired customers. For the most part, that means providing audio descriptions for films that blind moviegoers can use to hear a visual description of the film. But for various reasons, these services aren’t always available. Here in the Bay Area, a local group of disability rights attorneys are investigating audio descriptions at AMC theaters, and need your feedback.

The announcement is below:

Disability Rights Advocates and Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld are investigating complaints from blind individuals who have been unable to use audio description services at American Multi-Cinema, Inc. (“AMC”) movie theaters. We are interested in speaking with legally blind individuals who have encountered problems when attempting to use audio description services at AMC theaters in California.

Audio description refers to recorded audio that provides synchronized descriptions of a movie’s key visual details during natural pauses in dialog during the movie. Many popular films are released with the audio description feature. Movie theaters provide access to audio description by issuing upon request wireless handsets and headphones that play the audio description track during the movie. This configuration allows blind customers to listen to both the dialog and sound effects in a movie and descriptions of the visual aspects of the film.

If you are legally blind and you have been unable to access audio description services at AMC theaters in California because the audio description equipment was malfunctioning, because AMC staff did not know how to configure the audio description equipment, or for any other reason, we would appreciate speaking with you about your experiences. To share these with us, please contact Charlotte Landes by phone at (415) 433-6830 or by e-mail at Clandes@rbgg.com.