Until the close of 2017, Daniel Goldstein was an attorney with the Baltimore, Maryland law firm of Brown, Goldstein & Levy. Dan became involved in the field of disability rights law nearly thirty-five years ago at the behest of the National Federation of the Blind (NFB). Beginning in 2000, Dan concentrated on accessibility of digital content and devices, including ATMs, voting machines, accessible absentee ballots, websites, e-readers, kiosks, educational software and instructional technology, among others.
When the Authors Guild sued the HathiTrust, alleging that mass digitization of library collections (over 15 million volumes) constituted copyright infringement, the NFB and certain blind scholars intervened as defendants and were successful in getting the court to rule that the making and distributing of copyrighted content for use by persons with print disabilities is a fair use. Dan believes this is the most significant victory of his career.
Editor’s Note: This piece is a part of our series celebrating the thirty-year anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has been transformational in many ways, especially in the way that people with disabilities can access public spaces and thereby participate in their communities. Nevertheless, a look at…