Haben Girma, Disability Rights Advocate

Haben Girma, Disability Rights Advocate

From Wikipedia: Haben Girma is an American disability rights advocate, and the first deafblind graduate of Harvard Law School. Girma was born in Oakland, California in 1988, after her mother fled Eritrea in 1983 during the Eritrean War of Independence and met her father, an Eritrean, in California. She lost her vision and hearing as a result of an unknown progressive condition beginning in early childhood In 2013, Girma joined Disability Rights Advocates (DRA) in Berkeley, California as a Skadden Fellow. She worked there from 2015 to 2016 as a staff attorney, working on behalf of people with disabilities. Girma says she became a lawyer in part to help increase access to books and other digital information for persons with disabilities. She now works to change attitudes about disability around the world, including the development of accessible digital services. While working for DRA in July 2014, Haben represented the National Federation of the Blind and a blind Vermont resident in a lawsuit against Scribd for allegedly failing to provide access to blind readers, in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Scribd moved to dismiss, arguing that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) only applied to physical locations. In March 2015, the U.S. District Court of Vermont ruled that the ADA covered online businesses as well. A settlement agreement was reached, with Scribd agreeing to provide content accessible to blind readers by the end of 2017

NBC News

Aug-19

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Wikipedia

Personal Website

NBC News

NBC News

Photograph

English

Figures

Disabled. Eritrean-American. Advocate. Law. Disability Rights.

California