Haben Read online

  I gesture toward Liqin on the other side of Nick. “He was trying to say something. Would you ask what he wanted to tell me?”

  Nick turns to his left. Liqin leans into Nick’s ear. Nick leans into Liqin’s ear. They go back and forth. Then Nick returns to the keyboard. “He’s asking if you need more lemonade?”

  I point to my glass. “I actually haven’t finished mine. That was nice of him to ask, though.”

  “His speech is pretty slurred.”

  “I’m not surprised.” My face lights up with amusement. “He’s been typing gibberish.”

  “Hahahaha! Hey, if there’s anything you want to talk about you should ask me now before my typing skills go, too.”

  “That’s right, you’ve all been drinking. Uh oh,” I feign concern.

  “BTW, I think Maxine has been drinking, too.”

  “What?!” My hands follow the leather leash to her soft furry head under the counter. Her nose investigates a spot on the floor. “No!” She lifts her nose off the floor. “Good girl.” I sit back up and turn to Nick. “It’s not safe for her to drink alcohol. Her liver is tiny, not like law students’.”

  “Haha. It was just a little spilled beer. I’ll let you know if I see her licking the floor again.”

  “Thanks!”

  “I’m heading out soon. Relax and have fun over the holidays. See you in January!”

  “You, too. Bye!”

  “Lisa is taking the keyboard now. Bye!”

  The keyboard changes hands. “Hi, it’s Lisa again. I don’t mean to be rude, but why aren’t you drinking? Nothing wrong with it, just wondering if it’s a disability thing?”

  “There are people with disabilities who drink. It’s a personal choice for me.” I lift my hands in a partial shrug. “I like having fine motor skills.”

  “LOL. Good point. I’m going to head home before I pass out. Do you need help getting home?”

  “Nope. I know this area.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Most people have left the bar. Liqin is still here. Can I get a hug?”

  We hug, and then Lisa leaves.

  I reach for my glass. The cool drink soothes my throat. Talking over loud background noise has exhausted my voice. I wish I had set up a system with a visual display so I could type my side of the conversation, too. Or better yet, next time we could all hang out in a quieter environment.

  “I’m heading out,” I tell Liqin. “Are you doing okay?” I place the keyboard in front of him.

  Gibberish.

  My eyebrows furrow. “Are you going to be able to get yourself home?”

  Gibberish.

  If I were in his shoes, what would I want a friend to do? “I can walk with you. Your dorm is on my way home.”

  Gibberish.

  I drum my fingers on the table. “Yeah, you should head home. We’ll walk together. Come on, let’s go.” I pick up the keyboard and turn it off.

  His hands clasp the keyboard. I pry it out of his hands. He reaches for it again.

  “Okay, hang on.” I switch the keyboard on and place it in front of him. “It’s on now.”

  Gibberish.

  I laugh. “I’m sorry! What you’re typing isn’t making sense. But it’s much quieter outside. Tell me outside.” I pack up my communication system and put my coat on.

  Liqin stays seated at the bar. As I stand next to him, waiting for him to leave, my fingers absently trace the letters engraved on Maxine’s leash: THE SEEING EYE.

  Liqin reaches down and pets her.

  I address Maxine with an enthusiastic, “Are you ready to go?!” She leaps up. Her tail swishes against my legs, wagging away as if to say, “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”

  Liqin clambers out of his chair.

  “Forward!” Maxine bolts for the stairs. “Slow down.” As I step toward the stairs, I look back at Liqin. He lumbers along behind us. “Maxine, slow.” We keep pace with Liqin as he mounts the stairs. Maxine stops at the door. I pull it open, then wait for Liqin to go through.

  The past days of warmer winter weather have cleared the Cambridge streets of slippery snow and ice. Lucky for the students out drinking—lucky for Liqin.

  “What did you want to tell me?” I ask.

  Mumble, mumble.

  I lean in closer. “What?”

  Mumble, mumble.

  “Sorry, I’m still not hearing you.” I adjust my bag’s shoulder strap. “I’m walking home, and your dorm is on my way. Want us to walk with you?”

  Mumble, mumble.

  “Follow me.” Maxine and I reposition ourselves. “Maxine, forward. Good girl!” We walk down Dunster Street toward Harvard Square. Liqin stays behind us, muttering as he walks. He has a halting, zigzagging walk. Maxine and I slow down to match his speed.

  The sidewalk widens into the open plaza of Harvard Square. Halfway across the square, Liqin turns right, shuffling off in the wrong direction.

  Maxine and I hurry after him. When we catch up, I tug at his arm. “Your dorm is the other way.”

  No response.

  “Maxine and I are going left.” I point to the left.

  “Maxine?” he asks.

  “Yeah!” I look down at my dog and ask with exuberance, “Maxine, are you ready to go?” Her tail swishes against my legs. As Maxine moves, Liqin follows. The three of us walk together through Harvard Square. Soon we enter Harvard Yard, an enormous grassy field dotted with brick buildings and surrounded by brick walls. A confusing array of paved paths crisscross the Yard. Maxine strides through with confidence, picking out the right path.

  Liqin shambles off the path.

  “Liqin!” I call after him. Maxine and I catch up. “Would it help you if you hold my arm?” I lift his left hand and put it around my right elbow.

  Mumble, mumble. His hand drops to his side.

  “Can you try to stay with us? Follow Maxine, okay?”

  Mumble, mumble.

  Liqin follows Maxine through Harvard Yard, around the Science Center, and past the Langdell Law Library. Maxine and I drop him off at his dorm, safe and sound. That was my plan, anyway.

  In actuality, what happens is this: Liqin follows Maxine through Harvard Yard, around the Science Center, and along the Langdell Law Library. Then he stops, catapults up the library steps, and sits.

  A surprised laugh escapes my mouth. I gaze at the silhouette on the stairs, wondering what to do.

  This is the guy who reached across the unknowns of disability—the technology, the interpreters, the watchful dog—to start a conversation with me. Now our roles have reversed. This time I’m the one reaching into the unknown. How on Earth will I get him to come down and go home?

  Maxine and I mount the steps. I sit down beside Liqin and adopt an upbeat tone. “It’s Haben and Maxine. I have some good news. You finished your finals.”

  Mumble, mumble.

  “You’re done. You’re free. You don’t have to live in the library.”

  Mumble, mumble.

  “You’re really close to your dorm. Don’t you want to go home?”

  Mumble, mumble.

  I feel stuck—stuck on these cold, hard stairs, stuck outside on this wintry night. I run my hands through Maxine’s fur, trying to warm them. Liqin starts petting her, too. That gives me an idea.

  “Maxine is heading that way. Come on.” I stand up and address Maxine, using the same cheery voice I’ve used all evening. “Are you ready to go?” Maxine and I descend the stairs, but Liqin remains seated. I wait at the bottom, hoping he’ll come down on his own.

  He hollers, “Maxine!”

  I address my dog again, talking loud enough for Liqin to hear. “Maxine, are you ready to go?” The whole harness shakes as she wags her tail. Maxine and I start walking. Behind us, Liqin finally gets up, clambers down the stairs, and makes the short trek from the library to his dorm. Maxine and I travel another block to our apartment off campus.

  My first semester of law school bestowe
d many valuable lessons, and the most memorable one is this: hold off on the drinks in case a friend needs help getting home.

  I’m the first Deafblind student at Harvard Law School. Harvard excluded many groups throughout its history. When Helen Keller was applying for college, Harvard wouldn’t admit her. Back in those days, Harvard only admitted men. Helen’s disability didn’t hold her back, nor did her gender; it was the community at Harvard that chose to create barriers for women. Harvard’s sister school, Radcliffe College, offered Helen Keller admission, and she received her degree in 1904.

  The Harvard community chose to exclude women for the first two hundred–plus years of its existence. Over time, the culture shifted. Adapted. Changed. Harvard eventually opened its doors to women, people of color, and people with disabilities.

  Harvard has come a long way since Helen’s time, and there is still more work to do.

  Throughout my three years at Harvard Law School, I continue to face challenges. The school doesn’t know exactly which accommodations I need. Neither do I—doing law school Deafblind is new to me, too. We engage in an interactive process. We try different strategies, one after another, until we find the right solutions. I pass all my classes, even earning several honors. Over the summer, I gain valuable work experience—first at the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, then at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In my final year I’m honored with a Skadden Fellowship, one of the most prestigious fellowships in the legal field. The Skadden Foundation will provide two years of financial support for my work to increase access to digital reading services for blind students. I’ll be working at Disability Rights Advocates, a nonprofit law firm in Berkeley, California.

  No more cold, snowy winters for us. “Maxine, are you ready to go?”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Kicking Butt, Legally Speaking

  Burlington, Vermont. Winter 2015.

  Disability rights hero Daniel Goldstein grips the court’s attention. He stands at the lectern before Judge William K. Sessions III in the United States District Court for the District of Vermont. Dan leads the oral arguments while attorneys Mehgan Sidhu, Greg Care, Emily Joselson, James DeWeese, and I analyze every word from our positions at the plaintiffs’ counsel table.

  Behind us, blind individuals and sighted allies sit listening to the debate that will affect our access to books. Heidi Viens, the lead plaintiff, is a blind mother who lives in Colchester, Vermont. She loves reading to her four-year-old daughter. If we win, Heidi and other blind readers would gain access to a library of over forty million books and documents.

  Our team also represents the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), the oldest and largest organization led by blind people. With chapters in every state, the NFB has more than fifty thousand members. The organization has devoted an extensive amount of resources to teaching the public about accessibility. The NFB website offers an array of guides and tools on making information accessible. Despite the volume and accessibility of all this valuable information, numerous organizations ignore these suggestions. So the NFB employs a team of lawyers to protect the rights of blind Americans.

  About a year ago, I received complaints from blind people experiencing access barriers on Scribd. The San Francisco based company built a publishing platform and digital library advertised as “the world’s largest collection of e-books and written works.” Blind people trying to read books in the Scribd library hit a wall. The company programmed the library in a way that blocks screenreaders, software that converts visual information on screen to speech or digital braille.

  When I told NFB about the complaints coming in regarding Scribd, they were appalled. The Scribd situation struck a sensitive chord, especially because increasing access to books for children and adults is a core part of NFB’s mission. Digital barriers hinder our education and employment opportunities, and limit our participation in the marketplace of ideas.

  We sent Scribd a letter describing the access barriers and inviting them to work with us to fix the problems—no response. We sent the letter again—no response. We waited and waited. No response ever came.

  So, bright and early on my twenty-sixth birthday, we sued them.

  Scribd’s lawyer called for the court to throw out our case. In its motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, Scribd argued that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) does not cover internet-based businesses. Title III of the ADA prohibits discrimination by a “place” of public accommodation. The word “place,” Scribd alleged, means a physical location; spaces like restaurants, hotels, and movie theaters. Pointing out that it doesn’t have a physical “place” open to the public, Scribd said it didn’t have to make its library accessible.

  My team disagreed. Strongly. Vehemently. I volunteered to write our brief opposing Scribd’s motion to dismiss. Drafting that document was one of the most exciting moments of my legal career, almost as exciting as writing the complaint against Scribd. Writing is advocacy. Writing is strength. Writing is power. My years of practicing persuasive writing, legal research, and analytical reasoning poured into this one brief. When we finished, our team leader Dan Goldstein praised it as one of the best briefs he’d ever seen.

  Now, Dan stands before the court to voice the arguments from our brief and address the court’s questions. He’s a skilled orator, with decades of experience litigating on behalf of blind people. Dan believes that blind people, with the right tools and training, can compete on equal footing with our sighted counterparts. Dan himself is a person with disabilities, living with both depression and anxiety disorders. He has generously given his time to mentoring many young disability rights lawyers, including me.

  Typists transcribe the proceedings, sending the words to me in braille. Sitting with my colleagues at the plaintiffs’ counsel table, I feel the exhilaration of my disability rights work culminating in this courtroom. If the court agrees with Scribd, blind Americans will lose access to Scribd’s library of over forty million books and documents. A Scribd victory might even cause other tech companies to slash accessibility from their agenda—a disaster that would widen the digital divide.

  It all comes down to this question: does the law consider the internet a “place?”

  Dan: When you look at common usage, we can’t talk about the internet without using the language in place. We visit a website. We don’t "visit" a television station or a newspaper. We listen to or watch the television station, and we read the newspaper, but we visit a website. When the Burlington Free Press tells those who want to know how to help rebuild the Green Mountain Club in the wake of a fire to "visit" the club’s website, I don’t think the Burlington Free Press is being poetic and metaphorical. That’s the language we all understand. We don’t speak of cyber. We speak of cyber "space." We talk in chat "rooms." We post news on Facebook "walls." We have email "addresses." We shop at online "stores." When the Times Argus says in 2001 the internet is not just a place but lots of places, again I don’t think they are being metaphorical. That’s language. We all understand it and we understand it the first time we hear it. We understand "website." That’s a web "place" in the common understanding of the word "site"…

  Court: That may be the common meaning, but the problem with that argument is that this statute was passed in 1990. The question is what did place mean at the time of the passage of the statute in the first place, and if in fact Congress at that point felt that there should be this physical property threshold to the application of the ADA, then they must have been talking about something other than the internet. They must have been talking about some physical building location.

  Dan: If they were, then again the question is…why then do they abandon the word “place” in the oddest places? They use “establishment” instead of “place.” They define “public accommodation” but not “place of public accommodation,” although the regulations do, and I’ll address that in a minute. Why don’t they use it in the heading of the statute that
is the core of Title III defining what’s prohibited? And it’s because place is not an operative word. It’s a descriptive word. And one way to see that is when you try to change, for example, “a bakery, grocery store, clothing store, hardware store, shopping center, or other sales or rental establishment.” If you want to use “place” you have to say “or other place.” I think you have to say “or other place where sales or rentals occur,” or something. I mean, it’s too clunky. They weren’t trying to—to limit something. They were just trying, whether they used “place” or “establishment,” to describe something. And they used it over and over again when they are saying “or other” to make it as broad as they knew how to do using the English language. And knowing that they lived in an age of technology where, which they acknowledge in the statutory history, which was going to affect the way the ADA worked…

  How surreal to actually be here, witnessing this monumental debate, after working on these issues for years! These arguments have occupied space in my thoughts even before I wrote our Scribd complaint back in 2014. During my last year of law school, I wrote two papers that addressed the application of the ADA to online businesses. Now for the last year I’ve been embroiled in this Scribd saga: does the ADA cover virtual “places?”

  The ADA is one of America’s most comprehensive civil rights laws. Republicans and Democrats joined forces to pass the bill through Congress. Republican President George H. W. Bush signed the bill into law on July 26, 1990. Opponents immediately began chipping away at the ADA. Defense attorneys jabbed long and hard at the word “place,” creating a hole for their clients to slip through. Those cases set the precedent for the idea that the ADA does not cover websites and apps.

  Inaccessible websites and apps accelerate the information famine. People who have visual disabilities, dyslexia, and other print-reading disabilities face economic hardships spurred by the lack of access to job applications, health notices, government forms, and educational materials. Technology has the potential to remove barriers, but developers keep designing inaccessible digital services.