When we create a container for working with parties in conflict, how can we make sure we’re designing a process that is inclusive of and accessible to people with disabilities? Join Lainey Feingold, disability rights lawyer, public speaker and author of Structured Negotiation: A Winning Alternative to Lawsuits, with the CUC’s Melanie Rowen for a discussion of accessibility culture and mediation. Participants will come away with a better understanding of the intersections of conflict resolution, disability inclusion, and accessibility in the digital and built environment. The 25 year track record of Structured Negotiation as a collaborative dispute resolution process to advance disability rights will also be discussed.
Learning objectives for this webinar include:
- Understanding what digital accessibility means and why it is a civil right of people with disabilities
- Learning practical steps to make mediation and other conflict resolution processes inclusive for people with disabilities in both digital and built environments
- Discovering why Structured Negotiation has been an effective dispute resolution process in digital accessibility cases and beyond for a quarter century and how it integrates with mediation practice
Zoom
Lainey Feingold is a disability rights lawyer, an author, and a public speaker and trainer. She has her own law practice in Berkeley California and has worked in the digital accessibility legal space since the mid-1990s. Lainey and her clients and co-counsel developed and practice Structured Negotiation, a dispute resolution process that focuses on collaboration and relationship building instead of the cost and conflict of litigation. Without filing any lawsuits, she has negotiated complex accessibility settlements with dozens of organizations in the public and private sector, including Walmart, Bank of America, and the City and County of San Francisco.
Lainey’s book is titled Structured Negotiation, a Winning Alternative to Lawsuits. Full of stories and strategies from over 25 years of her collaborative disability rights practice, it was first published by the American Bar Association in 2016. The second edition was published in October 2021.
Lainey has been named a Legal Rebel by the American Bar Association and has twice received a California Lawyer Attorney of the Year (CLAY) Award — all for her work in Structured Negotiation and digital accessibility. In March 2022 she received the Jim Thatcher Lifetime Achievement Award at the Axe-Con digital accessibility conference.
Melanie Rowen, President of the Center for Understanding in Conflict, is a mediator and conflict coach who believes in the power of understanding-based conflict resolution to transform our world. She frequently trains individuals and groups on effective communication in conflict situations and on creating inclusive environments, particularly around gender, sexual orientation, and disability. Melanie previously litigated civil rights cases, including marriage equality, employment discrimination, issues involving transgender and gender non-conforming youth and their families, and issues facing LGBTQI elders, at the National Center for Lesbian Rights. Before that, she worked in business litigation at Latham & Watkins LLP. Melanie serves on the Board of Directors of the Transgender Law Center and is the Associate Director for Public Interest Programs at UC Berkeley School of Law.