In September 2024, Chicago resident Ramon Canellada filed a federal lawsuit against Preferred Open MRI, Ltd., d/b/a Preferred Imaging Centers, challenging its illegal refusal to provide him with healthcare services because of his disability in violation of the ADA and other disability rights laws. Open MRI provides imaging services at seven locations across the Chicagoland … Continue reading “Canellada v. Preferred Open MRI”
Disability Rights Advocates (DRA) and Disability Rights Arizona (DRAZ), two non-profit law centers, are investigating the autonomous vehicle industry and how it provides access for people with mobility disabilities, including people who use wheelchairs or other mobility devices. Autonomous vehicles, also referred to as self-driving cars, are vehicles with technology that senses the conditions around … Continue reading “Accessibility of Autonomous Vehicles”
In February 2024, DRA filed a class action lawsuit in the Northern District of California against national car rental company Hertz to end its systemic civil rights violations against people with disabilities who need hand controls to operate a rental car. While there are many configurations, hand controls generally consist of a mechanism that allows … Continue reading “Ho v. The Hertz Corporation”
In July 2022, DRA filed a lawsuit in the Western District of Washington against Providence St. Joseph Health for the health care company’s failure to ensure effective communication for Deaf patients seeking medical care at Providence’s Seattle-area facilities. DRA’s clients, all of whom are Deaf and use ASL as their primary method of communication, had … Continue reading “Spencer v. Providence St. Joseph Health”
In December 2021, Disability Rights Advocates and National Association of the Deaf filed a lawsuit against three major providers of podcasts, SiriusXM, Stitcher, and Pandora, to end their exclusion of deaf and hard of hearing Americans from each company’s extensive podcast streaming service. Read the complaint here. Because Defendants do not make transcripts available for … Continue reading “National Association of the Deaf v. Sirius XM”
On September 21, 2021, Planet Fitness, Inc., one of the largest and fastest-growing global franchisors and operators of fitness centers with more members than any other fitness brand, and the Paralyzed Veterans of America, National Council on Independent Living, and American Council of the Blind (collectively “Coalition for Inclusive Fitness” or the “Coalition”) announced a … Continue reading “Planet Fitness”
On July 20, 2021, DRA filed a class action lawsuit against the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) on behalf of Deaf human resource (HR) professionals who do not have equal access to SHRM’s services because SHRM fails to provide accommodations like sign language interpreters, captioning, and timely transcripts for SHRM’s continuing education programming. SHRM … Continue reading “Ruffa v. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)”
In a landmark agreement, advocates for people who are blind obtained WarnerMedia’s pledge to increase the accessibility of HBO Max—the much-anticipated online streaming platform that was launched in May 2020. Among other commitments, the agreement provided that WarnerMedia would provide audio description on at least 1,500 hours of new and existing programming on HBO Max … Continue reading “HBO Max Structured Negotiations”
In September 2020, DRA filed a class action suit on behalf of San Francisco’s LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired and two of its employees against payroll processing and HR giant, ADP TotalSource and its parent company Automatic Data Processing, Inc. for failing to make their industry-leading products and services accessible to blind managers and … Continue reading “LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired v. ADP TotalSource”
First Urology is a full-service urological medical and imaging practice with roughly twenty locations in Kentucky and Indiana. First Urology is required by law to buy equipment and train its staff to help people with disabilities lift onto examination and imaging tables. Instead, First Urology had a written policy stating that patients requiring assistance to … Continue reading “Fust v. First Urology”