[nabs-l] Thoughts on the United lawsuit

Wed Nov 3 15:16:04 UTC 2010

I agree with Steve    .  I am one of those guys who flies often and because 
I live in a United hub, I almost always fly United.  The problem is that 
United has cut back substantially on personnel working the ticket counter. 
They are actively directing people to the kiosks and asking them to check in 
themselves.  Earlier this year, I went to San Fransisco's airport and I had 
very little time to check in because I was on a mad dash from the courthouse 
where I had been part of a legal hearing on one of our cases.  I got to the 
airport and there wasn't a single United employee who could help. 
Fortunately, a kind passenger helped me navigate the kiosk and I got my 
boarding pass.

We have selected United because they are one of the airlines relying more 
and more heavily on these machines and with their merger with Continental 
now in effect, they are the largest airline in the world.  Believe me.  We 
do not act randomly when we engage in these efforts.
Regards,
Scott C. LaBarre, Esq.

LaBarre Law Offices P.C.
1660 South Albion Street, Ste. 918
Denver, Colorado 80222
303 504-5979 (voice)
303 757-3640 (fax)
slabarre at labarrelaw.com (e-mail)
www.labarrelaw.com (website)

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----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve Jacobson" <steve.jacobson at visi.com>
To: <jsorozco at gmail.com>; "National Association of Blind Students mailing 
list" <nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 02, 2010 7:17 PM
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Thoughts on the United lawsuit

> 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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>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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