Disability Rights

Our Work

Photo of Linda Dardarian and California Council of the Blind members at federal court in San Francisco.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and similar state laws prohibit discrimination on the basis of disability in employment, public accommodations, commercial facilities, transportation, and telecommunications.

Goldstein, Borgen, Dardarian & Ho has been at the forefront of ensuring compliance with the ADA and ensuring access for persons with disabilities by seeking to enforce these guaranteed rights.

We have negotiated landmark agreements for individuals who are blind or have low vision, which provide alternative formats (including Braille, large print and audio) for printed materials, accessible commercial websites, talking pill bottles from all major retail pharmacies in America, and the installation of “talking ATMs” at tens of thousands of banking locations across the country. The firm is a leader in negotiating website accessibility for people with visual impairments who use screen reader or screen enlargement software, reaching settlements with entities as diverse as Major League Baseball, Advanced Media, American Cancer Society, Bank of America, CVS, and RadioShack, among others. The firm has also negotiated settlements with major national retail chains requiring the installation of tactile point of sale machines that allow persons with visual impairments to privately enter their personal identification numbers at checkstands. We have also negotiated the installation of accessible pedestrian signals in San Francisco, and accessible sidewalks in the city of Los Angeles. In other significant disability access cases, the firm brought and successfully resolved claims which resulted in increased access to merchandise at Macy’s stores in California for persons with mobility disabilities. We have also negotiated settlements that resulted in an increased access to healthcare services for persons with mobility, visual, hearing and speech impairments who visit UCSF, the Sutter Health chain of hospitals and clinics, and the Kaiser Permanente system throughout California.