[nabs-l] Thoughts on the United lawsuit

[Steve Jacobson]

Joe,

Have you asked anyone who is in a position to know what the strategy is?  As long as we can't take on every battle at once, we're never all going to agree 
as to which ones we take on.  Still, I think United was the biggest of the airlines and may well still be second biggest.  I suggest that makes the choice less 
than random.  What I have observed is that we have generally picked entities that are significant players in their particular areas with the hope that victories 
there will have the greatest influence.  That means that we don't have to take every institution to court who has an inaccessible ATM because they may 
well make them accessible on their own as they see the big players moving in that direction.  Getting the big players to move also makes the process 
cheaper.

Regarding menus, with the coming of computer-based menus and such, I think feelings have shifted some on that.  Partly, expectations have changed 
because many chain restaurants have braille menus.  It is possible that some of the reactions to particular issues are tied to what we got used to.  For 
example, I was used to getting help with menus in restaurants by the time that accessibility became as public an issue as it is today so having every menu in 
braille just didn't seem as important as other issues of the time.  When ATM's came along, though, suddenly others could get cash when their banks were 
closed and I couldn't.  It was a convenient service from which we were excluded.  What was more, they were computers and accessibility could be added 
to the base units fairly easily and built-in once the expectation was there.  To some degree, the same is true of airline kiosks.  Sooner or later, we'll see 
cutbacks in personnel as more people use them and the alternative service will almost certainly take a good deal more time.  Again, if our accessibility were 
designed in, it wouldn't have to be a big deal and eventually won't be.  While many people don't fly much, as you say, it is certainly far more common than it 
was several decades ago.  The decrease in other forms of transit make it almost unavoidable some times.  However, blind people who do fly are often flying 
for business reasons where being able to navigate and handle such things efficiently is very important.  I suspect that if restaurant menus go electronic as 
some predict, we will probably 
want to be sure we are included, because again, eventually our inclusion won't cost that much and servers will interact less with all customers.  

We are never going to see everything completely accessible, so it will always be necessary to pick our battles.  It is possible that while we're doing this work 
that handheld readers will evolve to the point that they can close the gap some.  Whether my vision of what is happening is what is really the case is hard to 
say because I have not asked.  From where I sit, most of our moves have made sense to me, though, and even those I might wonder about have helped us 
more 
than would have been the case if we did nothing.  

Best regards,

Steve Jacobson

On Tue, 2 Nov 2010 18:59:09 -0400, Joe Orozco wrote:

>I feel the lawsuit is random.  Not every ATM out there talks.  We're not
>suing financial institutions for not following Bank of America's example.
>Not every touch screen credit card machine in checkout lines is accessible.
>Why didn't we go after major retailers to fix this?  My point is that there
>are interactions consumers are far more likely to carry out on a daily basis
>than traveling by air, and of those traveling, how many of these are going
>to choose United Airline?

>One of the first things I was told when joining the Federation was that
>restaurants do not need to have Braille menus because it is just as easy for
>the customer to ask their server what the menu features.  So, how is this
>issue of an inaccessible touch screen any different?

>Joe

>"Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves,
>some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all."--Sam Ewing 


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