This event is free and open to all UMass Amherst students, faculty, and staff.
Online registration is now closed. To register, email: [email protected]
DEIW 2025 is a week-long series of virtual sessions, workshops, and micro-learning events to raise campus awareness and improve digital access and inclusion for all.
Introducing Our DEIW 2025 Keynote
Given recent federal government actions, there is uncertainty regarding the impact on accessibility-related protections. Yet while we need to pay attention to what is happening in Washington, we also need to remember that the ADA and other federal laws are strong, flexible and cannot be easily dismantled. More important, Massachusetts has long been a leader in digital accessibility and protecting the rights of its disabled citizens. It continues in that role today.
Whatever your role, you can help create a community of inclusion across UMass campuses. How? By recognizing and acting on the power of digital accessibility to build bridges, open doors, safeguard privacy, and shape a disability-inclusive culture of welcoming and belonging.
Our keynote speaker, Lainey Feingold, has been a disability rights lawyer with a focus on digital accessibility thirty years. She’ll bring us up-to-date information about the digital accessibility higher education legal space. And she’ll shine a much-needed spotlight on what makes the Massachusetts legal environment disability-friendly. Lainey believes digital accessibility is about a lot more than legal compliance. She’ll also share best practices to leverage digital accessibility for campus-wide collaborations and disability inclusion.
About the Speaker
Lainey Feingold
Lainey Feingold’s parents graduated from UMass Amherst in 1950. All these years later, Lainey is a disability rights lawyer, author, and international speaker who has worked in the digital accessibility space since 1995. She helped negotiate the first web accessibility agreement in the United States in 2000 and has worked with dozens of companies on accessibility initiatives since then, all without filing any lawsuits. Lainey is the author of Structured Negotiation: A Winning Alternative to Lawsuits (2d Edition 2021 (English) and 2024 (Spanish)). She was named a Legal Rebel and Problem Solver of the Year by the American Bar Association and twice received a California Lawyer Magazine Attorney of the Year Award. Lainey serves on the Board of Teach Access. More info at LFLegal.com.
