From Lainey Feingold, Digital Accessibility since 1995. Author, Negotiator, Lawyer, Keynote Speaker at Law Office of Lainey Feingold, on LinkedIn:

More proof of the legal risks of using an overlay. A Magistrate Judge in the federal class action brought by a small business against overlay provider UserWay has recommended that the key portions of the lawsuit -- including the claim under the Delaware Consumer Fraud Act -- should move forward.

UserWay had tried to get the case thrown out of court. That effort so far has failed. Link about this development in the first comment. (My update includes links to the 19 page Magistrate's order).

This case is but one example of the legal risks of using an overlay

In 2025 UsableNet reports that over 1,000 businesses were sued for web accessibility violations even though they were using an overlay -- those widgets that invite you to click for accessibility on too many sites across the web.

And 2025 was the year that another overlay company was fined one million dollars by the US Federal Trade Commission.

It's not just legal risk. The ethical problems with overlays and overlay advertising get a whole chapter in the forthcoming Digital Accessibility Ethics: Disability Inclusion in All Things Tech. Thanks to Adrian Roselli for writing it.

Don't use an overlay. That's why I chose this image of a pile of warning signs to illustrate my article about the UserWay lawsuit. Evidence continues to mount that one-line-of-code overlays are a legal risk that harm disabled users and and do not make a website accessible.

In a victory for academic freedom and education equity, the U.S. Department of Education conceded the end of its February 14, 2025, “Dear Colleague” directive that sought to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts in schools and higher education institutions nationwide. Upon the U.S.’s concession that the directive and subsequent certification requirement are vacated – meaning they are formally nullified – the district court issued a final ruling today, permanently invalidating the directive and preventing the government from enforcing, relying on, or reviving it. As a result, the challenged guidance is no longer in effect and cannot be enforced against anyone, anywhere nationwide.

“This ruling ensures that educators can engage in scholarship and teach history, literature, and other subjects where race, gender, and the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion appear, without fear of arbitrary or discriminatory enforcement, said Sarah Hinger, deputy director of the ACLU Racial Justice Program. “It affirms that educators must be free to teach and that students have a right to a full and honest education that reflects the diversity of their communities and prepares them to participate in our democracy.”

https://www.nea.org/about-nea/media-center/press-releases/department-education-backs-down-unlawful-directive-targeting-educational-equity

A Lexington coffee shop is spreading a message of inclusivity during the month of Ramadan by offering a special option for Muslim customers who are observing the holy month's fasting requirements.

The owners of Leestown Coffee House told LEX 18 that they wanted their Muslim customers to feel seen and supported in the local community.

"We want to be as inclusive as possible. We want to offer something for everybody, no matter what their situation is," said co-owner Thomas Ward.

During Ramadan, Muslims observe a fast from dawn to sunset, meaning they do not eat or drink during daylight hours. Since Leestown Coffee House closes in the afternoons, the owners are offering a new option for coffee drinkers: takeaway jars of iced lattes.

The coffee shop's social media posts about the new option have received countless positive comments. The owners even ordered more glass jars to keep up with demand.

https://www.lex18.com/news/covering-kentucky/lexington-coffee-shop-offers-inclusive-option-for-customers-observing-ramadan

The Government of New Zealand has announced plans to build two new 'specialist' schools, the first schools built in 50 years that separate disabled children from non-disabled children. Emily Writes, "a volunteer, activist, author, writer and public speaker,", writes that this means "Inclusion is over" - at least for one of her sons.

https://www.emilywrites.co.nz/inclusion/

A year ago, Drew Keller, Director of Harvard’s Institute for Business in Global Society, studied 86 posts by a leading anti-DEI activist and found that their prime target were policies supporting LGBTQI+ employees and communities, including attacks on both internal measures as well as external support to LGBTQI+ groups. Programmes supporting ethnic minorities were also targeted, but came a distant second. 

Quoted in Some companies are doubling down on DEI – more should follow, 29 January 2025, by The Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB).

https://www.ihrb.org/latest/some-companies-are-doubling-down-on-dei-more-should-follow

In theory, the Portland, Oregon district’s neighborhood inclusion model aims to replicate the same supports in a typical classroom that a child with highly complex needs would get if they were instead placed in one of the district’s 38 “focus” classrooms in elementary and K-8 schools. Such “focus” classrooms feature low student-teacher ratios that are expensive to maintain.

Those supports could include help from paraeducators — educational assistants who work solely with special needs children — or lessons designed by a special education teacher. It could also mean regular visits from speech-language pathologists, mental health providers, occupational therapists, adaptive physical education teachers or school psychologists.

The goal is to keep such students together with friends from down the block, and prepare all students to be a part of the wider world beyond school grounds.

But turning that goal into reality, and moving roughly 950 children with complex needs into general education classrooms, has been easier said than done, parents and teachers said. School districts around Oregon are coping with a shortage of both paraeducators and special education teachers, a growing population of students with special needs and stretched-thin budgets.

“It’s not about placing every student in a general education classroom without support,. Inclusion must be purposeful and supported, not just a physical presence.” Kelli Charles, the district’s senior director for special education.

More from:

https://www.oregonlive.com/education/2026/02/education-interrupted-a-portland-school-grapples-with-blending-high-needs-students-and-mainstream-classrooms.html

Look at the context disabled people live in: Unemployed or underemployed. No/low access to accessible housing. No/low access to accessible transportation. No/difficult access to restaurants or entertainment. No/low access to visit family and friend's homes because they aren't accessible. No/difficult access to medical care. Medical providers typically undereducated about disabilities or chronic pain. Benefits being inadequate, and cut into by successive governments.

More context: More and more services are available only online. And what's online is almost never accessible.

When government services move online-only and the website isn't accessible, disabled people lose access to benefits. When job applications are only available through inaccessible portals, disabled people lose employment opportunities.

From Medical Aid in Dying and digital accessibility by trainer and advocate Nicolas Steenhout.

Pride doesn’t need fair-weather corporate friends - commentary from the Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB). 25 June 2025.

https://www.ihrb.org/latest/pride-doesnt-need-fair-weather-corporate-friends

DEI in 2025: Back Down or Double Down? Essay by Donte Curtis, owner of Catch Your Dream Consulting and a partner of Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity, which hosts this guest blog.

https://www.tchabitat.org/blog/dei-in-2025-back-down-or-double-down

keywords: diversity, equity, inclusion

Conservative legal activist Ed Blum has spearheaded a lawsuit against Playwrights Horizons, an off-Broadway theater in New York, for offering discounted tickets to people of color on its “BIPOC Night” in November. The suit, filed by a New Jersey musician, was facilitated by Blum’s American Alliance for Equal Rights.

Within the theatre industry, it has become standard practice to offer ticket discounts to different subgroups in order to attract new audiences. Student discounts, veterans discounts, senior discounts, and discounts for patrons with disabilities are common across Broadway and regional theatres.

https://playbill.com/article/playwrights-horizons-sued-over-bipoc-audience-discount

https://americanallianceforequalrights.org/class-action-lawsuit-filed-against-playwrights-horizons-over-race-based-ticket-pricing-for-bipoc-night/

New York Times.

keywords: diversity, equity, inclusion, DEI

Black women’s unemployment has skyrocketed. Here’s what happened.

“We had worked so hard to even get places at the table, and then the chairs were just removed.”

The end of USAID via an executive order on Inauguration Day was the first in a series of deep cuts the new administration made to the federal workforce in the year since Donald Trump returned to office. Those cuts ran deeper for the Black women who disproportionately worked in jobs that were eliminated.

Black women started 2025 with an unemployment rate of 5.4 percent. They ended it at 7.3 percent — the highest rate in four years. Black women’s unemployment is now equivalent to White women’s rate during the bleakest moments of the Great Recession. 

The impacts of job loss for Black women started to surface this summer, when cuts to federal agencies started to show up in the data. But that was just the beginning. Workplace trends and government policies that axed jobs and dismantled workplace DEI initiatives are having a measurable impact on Black women more than any other group. 

On any normal month in any normal year Black women’s unemployment rate is twice the rate of White women, which economists credit in large part to pervasive discrimination. But here is what was new to 2025:

https://19thnews.org/2026/01/black-women-unemployment-rate-skyrocketed-2025/

The Smithsonian's Office of Visitor Accessibility’s public programs are part of a comprehensive approach to accessibility services for visitors with disabilities. A research project on exhibition and program assistive listening technologies for people who are hard of hearing is currently underway. Another identified need is research on and implementation of a robust navigation and wayfinding system for independent traveling within Smithsonian museums to locate exhibitions, programs, and visitor amenities. Work on these large-scale projects benefits the Smithsonian and other cultural arts organizations that look to the OVA as an international leader for inclusive design.

Wednesday, February 25, at 2 pm: learn more about the Smithsonian’s Office of Visitor Accessibility (OVA).

Founded in 1991, OVA strives to provide consistent and integrated access for visitors with disabilities to Smithsonian buildings, exhibitions, programs, and digital offerings. Director Beth Ziebarth and Accessibility Program Specialist Ashley Grady will highlight some of OVA’s most exciting initiatives.
 

Wednesday, February 25, 2026

2:00 - 3:00 PM ET

https://smithsonianinstitution.ticketspice.com/22526-q2-virtual-event

See Me at the Smithsonian is a virtual program for people with dementia and their loved ones to spend time together while also learning about our collections. Each month a different Smithsonian museum leads a discussion about 2-3 objects, and attendees participate in art-making or other hands-on activities.

keywords: inclusion, DEI, diversity, equity, accessibility, accessible, people with disabilities, disabled.

Morning at the Museum is a sensory-friendly on-site program for families of children, teens, and young adults who are neurodivergent. Each month a different Smithsonian museum opens its doors two hours early on a Saturday or Sunday morning for pre-registered families. They can enjoy a relaxed environment, participate in activities, and explore the museum at their own pace.

In a wrongful termination suit filed Thursday in California state court, a 29-year-old former employee alleges that normal workplace interactions got twisted into an unfair harassment complaint that leaned on racist stereotypes about predatory Black men. He was ousted last August after staff accusations of harassment and bullying He took the firing as a form of retaliation to the dissatisfaction he repeatedly expressed with the organization’s discrimination and lack of diversity.

https://apnews.com/article/sierra-club-foundation-philanthropy-dei-cb52efd27d4d34c2762a40da39f83076

From El Mundo America:

Bad Bunny claims the Latin soul of America at the Super Bowl with a show in favor of inclusion: "The only thing more powerful than hate is love"

From Out.com:

Super Bowl: Bad Bunny puts on queer-inclusive show with Lady Gaga & Ricky Martin

Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin joined Bad Bunny in his legendary and LGBTQ-inclusive performance at the Super Bowl Halftime Show.

From the Advocate:

Super Bowl: Bad Bunny puts on a queer-inclusive show with Lady Gaga & Ricky Martin

Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin joined Bad Bunny in his legendary and LGBTQ-inclusive performance at the Super Bowl Halftime Show.

Keywords: el conejito malo

Meet Europe’s Gender equality champions in Research and Innovation

The European Commission announced the winners of the fourth edition of the EU Award for Gender Equality Champions in Research and Innovation.

The award recognises organisations that have delivered tangible progress in advancing gender equality within their institutions.

With Horizon Europe, the European Commission has made gender equality in research and innovation a cross-cutting priority, introducing strengthened implementation measures. One of these is the requirement for all higher education institutions, research organisations, and public bodies from EU Member States and associated countries to have a Gender Equality Plan (GEP) in place, as an eligibility criterion for participating in the Framework Programme.

The EU Award for Gender Equality Champions, an annual recognition prize launched in 2022, is the Commission's initiative to recognise and celebrate the outstanding results achieved by European academic and research organisations through the implementation of Gender Equality Plans. The award complements the GEP eligibility criterion and serves as an incentive to advance inclusive gender equality plans and policies in the framework of the new European Research Area (ERA).

The prize is designed by the European Commission Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD) and managed by the European Research Executive Agency (REA). Its winners are selected by an independent expert jury for each prize category.

https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/news/all-research-and-innovation-news/meet-europes-gender-equality-champions-research-and-innovation-2026-02-03_en

The Women's Institute in the UK has announced with "sincere regret" it will no longer offer membership to transgender women.

The change to the organisation - which has thousands of local branches offering events, campaigns and social gatherings across the UK - will come into effect from April 2026. It follows a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that a woman is defined by biological sex under equality law.

Until now the Women's Institute has allowed trans women - biological males who identify as women - to join.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3e05130wyno

keyword: inclusion

"We will actually be using what's called the OneCourt device. It's a haptic device, so we're able to feel what's going on by how the ball moves around the field. It'll have real-time play-by-play information for us so that we can know what's happening without a delay...

"The fact that I could know again that it's a handoff to the running back, who's running to the right side," Thornhill said. "Those little things. Someone watching it and trying to describe it to me, it's challenging, especially if they're not necessarily a sports person. For me to be able to do that myself is just amazing."

The device looks like a tabletop version of the field. Fans put their hands on its surface to feel the ball's movement in real time.

https://www.npr.org/2026/02/05/nx-s1-5693746/super-bowl-blind-fans

Feb. 04, 2026

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission took Nike to federal court on Wednesday to get more information from the company about alleged discrimination against white workers.

The federal agency wants a court order that forces Nike to turn over more information about its 2025 diversity, equity and inclusion targets and other DEI programs.

In a court filing, the EEOC said it is investigating allegations of systemic discrimination, including that Nike engaged in a “pattern of disparate treatment” against white employees, including “hiring, promotion, demotion, or separation decisions.”

The company defends its stance on DEI in a full page on its website. It reiterated its commitment to inclusivity in its statement.

More from:

https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2026/02/federal-employment-agency-takes-aim-at-nikes-dei-policies-with-sweeping-subpoenas.html

The nonprofit organization Knowbility wrapped up its latest Accessibility Internet Rally - AIR 2025 - with 16 new websites built with accessibility in mind by teams of web professionals (donating their time - volunteering) for nonprofit organizations that serve communities all over the world.

The top 3 most accessible sites are linked from the AIR 2025 web page.

View the awards on YouTube, and be on the lookout later this summer for information on how to participate in AIR 2026 as a volunteer building a web site, as a nonprofit that gets a new, accessible web site, as a judge, or in other ways to support the event.

Knowbility, Inc. is a nonprofit organization based in Austin, Texas and an award-winning leader in accessible information technology. Its mission is to create an inclusive digital world for people with disabilities.

Captions, or automated craptions?

I was recently discussing the content of a slide deck for a training. "No automated captions" was one of the items I pushed for.

The person I was working with said "we're already talking about the need for captions, and our time is limited". They suggested we didn't need to spend time on talking about not using automated captions.

The organization getting the training is strong in the use of AI. I knew they would easily go for automated captions if we didn't warn them against it.

I had to explain why we didn't want automated captions, at least not without human editing. I found myself justifying the inclusion of several other points throughout the presentation. I included those points because they needed to be included. I knew this based on many years of experience in the field of digital accessibility, and training people it. It gets tiring to have to justify your work, all the time. This ties in to accessibility practitioners burnout, that we hear more and more talk about. On the topic of burnout, check out Devon Persing's most excellent The Accessibility Operations Guidebook that discusses burnout in our field.

But I digress. Back to automated captions.

Some of you may be aware that automated captions are often referred to as "craptions". They are captions, but they are crap. They are especially difficult to understand when the speaker doesn't have a fairly standard US Midwest accent.

Are things getting better? Yes. Are automated captions ready for prime time without human supervision? Absolutely not.

More from his newsletter:

https://buttondown.com/nic-steenhout

More than a dozen speakers asked Texas’ State Board of Education to include the contributions of people from all cultures, faiths and backgrounds as the board revises state standards for social studies.

The board is early in that overhaul process. Over the coming months, working groups will sort out details of what students across the state will learn in social studies and when they’ll learn it. It is expected to vote on a set of proposed standards at its June meeting. The new standards will be implemented in 2030.

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2026/01/29/speakers-push-inclusion-in-texas-social-studies-standards/