Full Transcript
Heather Gilbert:
There is a shortage of attorneys representing people with disabilities.
Jeff Thompson:
Introducing disability rights lawyer, Heather Gilbert.
Heather Gilbert:
When someone is discriminated against, when they’re treated differently than other people, that is very hurtful.
Jeff Thompson:
Advocate for the United Blind of Minnesota.
Heather Gilbert:
Because there’s that awkward relationship sometimes between an employer and employee, it’s nice to have a neutral person or someone else get involved to be able to explain it. One time, I had a client that had a service dog, and she had called three different transportation companies, and all three of these places said that they did not allow dogs.
Jeff Thompson:
For more podcasts with a blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com, on Twitter @BlindAbilities, and download the free Blind Abilities app from the App Store and Google Play Store. That’s two words: Blind Abilities.
Heather Gilbert:
If it’s possible, I will often call and say, “I’m an advocate with the United Blind Association. I happen to be an attorney, but my purpose here today is to see what we can do to work this out.”
Jeff Thompson:
And now please welcome, Heather Gilbert from Gilbert Law.
Heather Gilbert:
If you believe you’re being treated differently, to point out and to try to find out the why behind it. That’s always the best thing to do because then, it might be just a misunderstanding and something that can be resolved right away.
Jeff Thompson:
Welcome to Blind Abilities. I’m Jeff Thompson. Today, we’re at State Services for the Blind in Minnesota in St. Paul, Minnesota, and I have with me, Heather Gilbert, from Gilbert Law. She’s an attorney and she’s here to talk about discrimination.
Jeff Thompson:
How you doing, Heather?
Heather Gilbert:
I’m doing well. How about you, Jeff?
Jeff Thompson:
I’m doing good. Thank you for taking the time out of your day and coming here and sharing with our listeners a little bit about discrimination and the law.
Heather Gilbert:
I’m excited to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
Jeff Thompson:
You bet.
Jeff Thompson:
Heather, can you tell us a little bit about what does discrimination look like today?
Heather Gilbert:
Certainly. I mean, that’s a pretty general question, but specifically for people with disabilities, discrimination is basically being treated differently than other people that are not disabled. And of course in Minnesota, we have a statute called the Minnesota Human Rights Act and it covers all the protected classes, so age, race, gender, so on so forth, disability.
Heather Gilbert:
But specifically for people with disabilities, we’re seeing that the more technology’s advancing, and the more opportunities that are for people without disabilities, we’re now seeing that there’s more and more barriers to communication, and barriers to access at school, at work, even walking down the street now. And so the discrimination is getting more discrete. We will often find that it’s not quite as blunt or crude, but it’s equally as discouraging and frustrating when a person with a disability is not able to access communication, or what have you, documents, maybe not being able to access email at work or being able to access meeting agendas, whatever it may be, equally to those that are not in that protected class.
Jeff Thompson:
And you’re not new to fighting for disabilities in the area of discrimination.
Heather Gilbert:
That’s correct. I actually was a sign language interpreter prior to becoming an attorney, and I worked for the Department of Human Services, Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services division. And in that capacity, we would have individuals from the deaf and hard of hearing community contact our office, and I would serve as an advocate. And so initially, in my early 20s, I started out calling dentists, and doctors, and employers, and talking with them about the ADA, and section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and the Minnesota Human Rights Act, and talking about those entities/obligations under title I, II, and III to provide communication access. And I also was interpreting. I was interpreting at the legislature and interpreting for folks at the department.
Heather Gilbert:
And during that time, I realized there is a shortage of attorneys representing people with disabilities. There’s the Minnesota Disability Law Center, which is a wonderful agency, and even to this day, I work very closely with them. But there are very few private attorneys that are handling these types of cases, and I realized that that’s a big gap, at least in the Twin Cities area. Now, my disclaimer is that there are many disability rights attorneys around the country, but at that time, I knew very little about that. All I knew was what we had here in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Minnesota. And so I decided to go to law school as a second career, and started right before I turned 30. Or I guess 28, 29. And after law school, opened up my firm immediately after graduation, and I’ve been open almost seven years now.
Jeff Thompson:
Now Heather, I remember when I first met you. I was at a United Blind meeting. We were at Elsie’s and they introduced you. And then when someone mentioned your name for doing a podcast, I kind of tilted my head a little bit and I said, “I think I remember her.”
Heather Gilbert:
Yes, that’s correct. So for the first five years of our practice, we represented a range of people with disabilities, but the dominant populations were people with hearing loss and people with vision loss. And so we had represented several individuals, one woman in particular against a school that refused to provide accessible textbooks for her in the various capacities that she wanted for her textbooks. We also had represented some individuals in employment situations, as well as against the city of Minneapolis.
Heather Gilbert:
And so the United Blind, somehow or another, learned about that and learned that we were taking cases for individuals with sensory disabilities, as well as other disabilities. And they approached us to see if we might be interested in serving as the United Blind advocate. And if you want, I can explain a little bit about how that program works.
Jeff Thompson:
Sure. That’d be great.
Heather Gilbert:
Yes. Okay. Apparently, for decades now, the United Blind has actually had funding to pay for advocacy services for anyone in Minnesota that has some sort of vision loss that would be considered legally blind, or identifies as a person with vision loss. And that’s the only criteria that is necessary. You don’t have to be a member of the United Blind or a member of any particular organization. You do have to be a Minnesotan because the funding is limited just for people within Minnesota. They could contact our office to have advocacy services for whatever sort of barrier they’re experiencing because of their vision loss.
Heather Gilbert:
For example, if somebody is interested in renting an apartment, and the lease is not accessible, and they’ve contacted the property manager and asked for it to be in braille, or for them to maybe email it so that they can review it with JAWS or some other software device, and the facility’s unwilling to do that. Let’s say they only have it in carbon copy paper and it’s 8-point font. They could contact our office and we would serve as an advocate to call that landlord or that property manager, speak with them about the law, that they do have a legal obligation to make sure these documents are accessible to people with disabilities.
Heather Gilbert:
And the nice part about that is there’s a difference between doing advocacy and commencing a formal lawsuit. While we also can do that at our law firm, and we do frequently, this particular role is to help resolve the situation before it becomes bigger. And so oftentimes, if we can get in right away where there is some sort of discrimination going on based on vision loss, we’re able to resolve the situation more quickly, and all parties are able to move on. So that’s just one example, housing.
Heather Gilbert:
But we also provide advocacy services for employment situations. For example, we had one individual that had vision loss and was getting accessible devices in her workplace, but her vision loss was getting worse. And so now, what was previously provided by the employer is no longer working for this person. And she tried to explain it to her boss as best she could, but because there’s that awkward relationship sometimes between an employer and employee, it’s nice to have a neutral person or someone else get involved to be able to explain it, to talk about the law, but to also talk about options and to talk about resources. And so often when I’m serving as an advocate, I may share with the employer, or the property manager, or whatever party it is that I’m speaking to about the law about state services for the blind, or about services where, for a nominal fee, they could pay to have something converted to braille. And so part of my job is to provide advocacy, to talk about the law and the obligations to make sure that documents and resources are accessible, but also to give ideas for meeting those needs.
Jeff Thompson:
You mentioned about getting in early, like, being the mediator between the two people, or facilitating the communications between the company and an individual. What kind of responses do you find that you’re getting from companies?
Heather Gilbert:
Sometimes it’s outright denial. One time, I had a client that had a service dog, and she was blind, and also needing to use transportation services. And she had called three different transportation companies, and all three of these places said that they did not allow dogs. And so my client and I decided the best approach would be to send letters talking about the facts of what had happened, that on this day she called and requested that company to transport her from point A to point B, and what the law said about making sure that they’re accessible for service animals, and that religious reasons … Some of the drivers had religious reasons where they didn’t want service animals in their vehicles. But we just explained that the ADA trumps that. If you’re going to have a service that’s provided to the public, you need to be accessible.
Heather Gilbert:
One of the companies responded well. Another company made up something and said that this was outside of their service area, which is the reason that they denied her services, which wasn’t true. They were very clear to her that the reason she was denied services was because of this service animal. And the third company didn’t respond at all.
Heather Gilbert:
In each one of these situations, our response … And my client and I would discuss together how we’re going to respond to each one of those. Some entities are very open and they say, “Oh, boy. I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize that this had happened, and let’s see what we can do and work out an accommodation, or a policy change, or implementing a corrective action of some kind so that we’re accessible down the road,” and others that choose not to respond. My client and I would then decide “What should we do next? Should we file a complaint with the Department of Human Rights?” That’s one place to file a complaint. The Minneapolis Civil Rights Commission is another place to file a complaint. The Department of Justice. And then sometimes, of course, you could file a lawsuit. So those are some of the responses that we get.
Heather Gilbert:
Usually, if we get in early, the property manager, the employer, and we’re not asking for damages, financial damages, usually they’re willing to work with us, and figure out a way to resolve the problem.
Jeff Thompson:
Well, that’s great for people who usually haven’t embarked upon something like this in their life before. All of a sudden, they come to this roadblock, this barrier to them succeeding, that they have a service like this.
Heather Gilbert:
Yes. Yeah. Exactly. And oftentimes, I find that with the blind and low vision community, the folks that contact our office are very aware of what the law says and what their rights are, and may, at times, be frustrated because they may explain the same thing that I would explain to the facility. But because I’m an outside person coming in and giving this information, it’s sometimes more effective.
Heather Gilbert:
That’s why we have this resource. That’s why the United Blind has, for years, set aside money to be able to pay for this advocacy service because it’s not really anything provided by the state. There’s definitely great consultants and assistance from the State Services for the Blind, but the advocacy that we do is little bit different than what state employees are able to do.
Jeff Thompson:
Well, that’s really important because so many times I’ve noticed when those situations happen, it’s hard to separate your personal emotions from the law and what’s happening, and it feels like sometimes that you might not be able to state your case because you’re vested in your own goals, your journey. You want the apartment. You want the job. You want to stay at the job. You want to retain the job. And it could get quite emotional for you, so it’s nice to have someone come in, like you said, and mediate or facilitate.
Heather Gilbert:
Exactly. Because when someone is discriminated against, when they’re treated differently than other people, that is very hurtful. One response is anger. One response sadness, defensiveness. There’s a lot of different responses, but a lot of those responses are usually emotional. And it’s very difficult to talk with someone across the table that usually just doesn’t get it.
Heather Gilbert:
Sometimes people really do not want to be accessible, but usually it’s that they just don’t understand. They don’t understand that “No, I can’t just find somebody to read this lease out loud to me,” or, “I can’t just find some other technology to do this. You have to provide it in a resource that’s accessible to me,” or, “I can’t just read it in braille if I’ve never learned braille. You need to find another way to make this accessible for me.”
Heather Gilbert:
And so sometimes the opposing service provider or entity just really doesn’t understand, and so to have someone like me get involved and say, “Look, I get it. I’m a business owner. I understand your perspective. This is gonna cost money to pay to have this put into braille,” or, “This is gonna cost money or time. It’s gonna cost your staff more time to reformat it, to send it to Microsoft Word instead of PDF, or to put it in the mail with 18-point font, and you’re used to sending everything in 12-point font. But you are a service provider, and you are providing a service to the public, and there’s this law that’s been around since 1990 from H.W. Bush.” And so if I can approach it from an angle where I can say, “Look, I get it. I understand. But this is the law, and this is what we can do, and here are some resources, and here’s how we can make this happen,” it’s usually pretty effective.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah, I think when a lawyer shows up, like you said, one of the first things people think’s “Lawsuit.” But you don’t approach it that way. You approach it like “Let’s find some meeting ground here. Let’s educate the people who are not aware of what the law is, and then start from there.” Like you said, starting in early.
Heather Gilbert:
That’s a very good point. And my first step, usually if I believe it’s something that can be resolved more quickly, is I will make a phone call as opposed to send a letter. Because when they get a letter where the letterhead says, “Gilbert Law PLLC” and “signed by an attorney,” even before they read it, they’re automatically on the defense, and they pick up the phone, and they wanna get their lawyer to handle this. And if it’s possible, I will often call and say, “I’m an advocate with the United Blind Association. I happen to be an attorney, but my purpose here today is to see what we can do to work this out. We have an individual that’s really wanting to access your services.”
Heather Gilbert:
We had a situation just recently where a website, a really neat food provider, has delivery services. And it’s this new service, and everybody’s really excited about being able to have the food delivered right to your door instead of having to go into the store and get it, and it’s ideal for many people. In particular, this blind woman really liked the idea of being able to select all of her groceries right online and have them delivered. However, there were a couple fields within this screen that were not accessible. And for whatever reason, whoever the web developer was, they knew how to make some of it accessible, but not some other pieces of it. And it’s complicated because when she initially called, they said, “Well, that’s just the way that it is. We can’t do anything about it. Our system is accessible 95%, but this other 5% is not.”
Heather Gilbert:
Well, that’s not gonna work because those few fields that weren’t accessible set the actual time of the delivery. And so, if you couldn’t enter in the time that you wanted the food delivered, you couldn’t complete the transaction. When you’re filling out the field, you have to fill out all the fields before you can click “proceed to checkout” and to process the payment. She would have to call the customer service line to finish her order every single time, and that’s tedious, and that takes away the whole point of this very efficient service. And so that’s one of the methods that I used, was calling the entity. And then I ended up having to speak with one of their web designers, but we were able to resolve the situation by that method.
Jeff Thompson:
How does one recognize, or how does one realize that they’ve been discriminated against?
Heather Gilbert:
That’s a really good question. And I will say that frequently we will receive a call, and someone will say that they were treated differently, or something happened. It may or may not be because of vision loss. It may be because that person really is just a jerk and they’re a jerk to everybody, regardless of vision loss, gender, race, age. That person is just very mean. You didn’t get the job sometimes, and it’s not because of disability. It’s maybe because of the other person had more connections, and the other person went to the same college as that person, and there was a connection there that they didn’t have with you. And there’s reasons all the time where we’re treated differently, but it’s not because of disability always.
Heather Gilbert:
And so a lot of that conversation that I have with that initial call with somebody who believes they’ve been discriminate against, is to ask a lot of clarifying questions. And “How can you pin this on the fact that it’s vision loss and not because you’re a woman? I mean, maybe it’s gender determination. Maybe it’s race discrimination.” There could be any number of reasons that this happened. And so a lot of that conversation is to really tease out exactly why this treatment is happening and how we can apply it to vision loss, and that’s not always easy.
Jeff Thompson:
So, Heather, when someone does have one of these red flags, where they might think, “That’s a little discrimination maybe going on here.” How can they get a hold of you?
Heather Gilbert:
So the best way to reach us to triage your case, again, you do have to be a Minnesotan and identify as a person with vision loss, but would be just to give us a call. 651–528–8466. We provide advocacy services for people that are experiencing discrimination in the workplace or in the community, jails, police departments, hospitals, housing, anything of that nature. And having difficulty, whether it be with transportation service companies, or getting documents in an accessible format. If you’re a college student, and your disability services will only provide textbooks in braille and no other methods. Those are all really good types of situations to contact us. Not just limited to those, but those are a lot of the most common types of examples.
Heather Gilbert:
So again, 651-528-8466. You also can email us. We’re happy to communicate by email, and that’s heather@gilbertlawpllc.com. And that’s G-I-L-B-E-R-T-L-A-W-P-L-L-C.com.
Jeff Thompson:
Now, Heather, I’m sure there’s a lot of people out there that are going about their daily life and stuff, and so when something like this does happen to them, they’re kind of, like, probably caught off guard a little bit. What advice would you have for someone who is thinking that something may have just went astray?
Heather Gilbert:
Great question. So the first thing I always say is to try not to respond in anger or defensiveness. Definitely ask why. Explore the rationale behind. If you’ve asked for something to be accommodated or provided in a different format, or if you believe you’re being treated differently, to point out and to try to find out the why behind it. That’s always the best thing to do because then it might be just a misunderstanding and something that can be resolved right away.
Heather Gilbert:
The next step, if you know for sure that the employer is treating you differently in violation of the law, definitely you’d want everything documented. We’re often tempted to do everything by phone, but that’s one of the most difficult to prove, the he-said-she-said of whatever communicated by phone. And so if you can get a follow-up email, if you can get more information documented in email or in letter form, that’s really great evidence to help.
Heather Gilbert:
Like, for example, the transportation company. The woman called over the phone asking for transportation services, which is normal. That’s usually our first go-to, is to place a phone call. And they said the reason that they couldn’t serve her is because they don’t allow dogs in their vehicles. Well, then when I followed up, they said, “No, no, no. We couldn’t serve her because she was outside of our service area.” And we weren’t able to prove that one way or the other.
Heather Gilbert:
So if you’re able to follow up, and if you have a conversation by phone, it’s absolutely appropriate to ask for that person’s email address and then follow-up with an email and say, “I understand that you’ve said that you’re unwilling to provide this lease in an accessible format for me. I asked for this, and you said that you were not willing to do that. If that is not correct, please respond to this email and let me know, but that’s my understanding of what our conversation was.” That’s kind of the second best because you’re summarizing for them, and they have the opportunity to respond and say, “That’s absolutely not true. We’re more than happy to provide an accessible format.” But then at least you have a paper trail to document that.
Jeff Thompson:
But hopefully it was just a misunderstanding.
Heather Gilbert:
Yes. We always hope that’s what it is.
Jeff Thompson:
Well, Heather, thank you so much for taking the time, and coming onto Blind Abilities and sharing with us a little bit about discrimination and the law.
Heather Gilbert:
Yes, thank you for having me. It was really a great experience.
Jeff Thompson:
Such a great time talking to disability rights lawyer, Heather Gilbert. And you can find out more about Heather Gilbert and the United Blind in the show notes. And remember to check out your vocational rehab, your state agency, your state services for the blind to see what they can do for you. And I wanna thank Chee Chau, Chee Chau Chee Chau for his beautiful music. And that’s @LCheeChau on Twitter. So I wanna thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed. And until next time, buh-bye.
Music] [Transition noise] -When we share
-What we see
-Through each other’s eyes…
[Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]
…We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities.
Jeff Thompson:
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