Disability Access

Our Focus, Your Goals

The lawyers in Ogletree Deakins’ Disability Access Practice Group have extensive experience helping their clients face the multiple challenges presented by Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and other disability access laws.

From defending class actions to ensuring compliance with federal and state building standards, and from navigating the complicated regulations covering service animals, hotel reservations, and ticketing to the use of auxiliary aids and interpreters needed for effective communication with blind and deaf individuals, our work is comprehensive.

Business-Oriented Compliance Solutions

The Disability Access Practice Group is experienced in guiding clients through compliance challenges. In providing advice and counsel, we focus on finding practical, business-oriented solutions for cost-effective compliance.

To meet our clients’ compliance needs in this area, we have extensive experience providing advice and counsel to our clients’ businesses in the following areas:

Architectural Audits

Clients commonly seek one of three approaches to evaluating and achieving architectural barrier compliance to best position their businesses to defend potential litigation.

Basic Compliance Audits: Some clients ask us to help their businesses identify and eliminate the barriers that most commonly lead to architectural barrier litigation and develop a plan to achieve basic compliance to enhance the likelihood of avoiding the highest volume of architectural barrier litigation.
Comprehensive Audits: Clients often ask our attorneys to oversee a comprehensive review of their facilities to understand what steps would be necessary to achieve compliance and to help design a remediation plan that is highly defensible in the event of litigation.
Multi-Location Audits: Many retail, restaurant, and hospitality clients seek our advice in fashioning audit and remediation plans that tackle multiple locations.

Sports and Entertainment Ticketing Compliance

We can help identify the need for modification of ticketing and sales practices. We also develop policies and procedures to receive and process ticket-buyer requests for accommodations in seating, parking, and other operational measures.

Hotel Industry Compliance

Federal regulations impose extensive obligations on hoteliers in areas such as reservations practices, the disclosure of accessible features on their websites, the accessibility of shuttle services, guests’ requests for accommodations, and the distribution of accessible rooms.

Healthcare Compliance

We have extensive experience working with businesses on compliance programs to help insulate them from litigation related to sign language interpreters, effective communication, and the effective transfer and treatment of disabled patients.

Restaurant Compliance

In addition to the architectural audit and remediation work commonly needed in this industry, our attorneys help ensure basic parking, seating, and reservations policy compliance to reduce the most common sources of access litigation.

Higher Education Compliance

Colleges and universities face a host of access compliance issues because, in addition to operating schools and educational programs in which students require architectural and educational accommodations and auxiliary aids, many institutions operate stadiums and arenas, housing, temporary lodging, healthcare facilities, and restaurants, each of which have been common targets for disability access litigation. Our attorneys have the depth and breadth of experience to help colleges and universities through this broad range of compliance challenges.

Fair Housing Compliance

Our lawyers understand the unique challenges our clients face under federal and state fair housing laws, both in architectural compliance and the provision of reasonable accommodations to disabled tenants and applicants.

Reasonable Accommodation/Auxiliary Aid Practices

We have developed a refined set of policies and procedures that instruct guests and visitors on how to request reasonable accommodations and auxiliary aids and services, and that establish effective practices for processing those requests.

Training

Training is a critical component to ensure that the best policies and practices for disabled customers, patients, and guests are effectively implemented. We have extensive experience providing training for senior managers and the frontline employees who have direct customer and guest contact.

Website Accessibility

The Disability Access Practice Group has established a Website Accessibility Team whose members have collectively handled hundreds of these matters, often against the lawyers responsible for the highest volume of these matters. Our lawyers are poised to help businesses assess exposure, bring their websites into compliance, and effectively respond to opposing parties and their lawyers.

Litigation and Advocacy

Our practice group attorneys have a practical understanding of threats made by customers, patrons, guests, or patients, and know how to help clients respond in ways that can often avoid litigation and reduce legal costs and accommodation retrofitting. Often, outside experts must be obtained to demonstrate compliance with laws and regulations or to dispute claims of violation, and our attorneys have established relationships with leading experts in various disciplines.

Finally, the firm’s lawyers are experienced in defending against the growing number of Title III class action claims, which often seek nationwide injunctive relief and damages in many states whose laws provide for that relief.