AppleInsider | Apple settles disability lawsuit over San Francisco store

AppleInsider | Apple settles disability lawsuit over San Francisco store

Apple has agreed to make changes to its San Francisco store and retrain its entire retail workforce as part of a settlement in a long-running disability lawsuit filed by two wheelchair-bound customers.

Oakland residents Jana Overbo and Nicole Brown-Booker, together with Apple, signed an agreement late last week to make three pages’ worth of changes to the actual store on Stockton Street, the Cupertino-based company’s employee training procedures, and its retail website.

The two women had separate but identically frustrating experiences in May and July of 2007. According to the original suit, neither could reach products or service desks from their wheelchairs, the store’s presentation theater lacked accessible seating or passageways, and elevator buttons were placed too high to reach, resulting in wasted trips and added difficulty.

making a chair

making a chair, originally uploaded by jasonnolan.

This is a chair that I made, with antoinette’s guidance, at the Adaptive Design Association in NYC. It is an amazing design, and very flexible in terms of how it can be made. Click on the picture to go to the other ones, that show the process. Anyone near NYC should take their workshop (http://www.adaptivedesign.org/).