Suit filed over parks site blind cannot use
A $66 million contract that was supposed to let people make reservations online for state parks and campgrounds has produced a website that is inaccessible to nearly 1 million blind or vision-impaired Californians, and the contractor should reimburse the state, a leader of the Bay Area’s blind community says in a lawsuit.
Bryan Bashin, CEO of LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired in San Francisco and a self-described outdoor enthusiast, said he was eagerly awaiting the debut of the ReserveCalifornia.com site in August 2017, only to discover that it did not accommodate screen-reader software that allows the visually impaired to use computers.
“Even today, I and many other people with disabilities are still locked out of the system because of private contractors who bilked California out of millions of dollars,” Bashin said in a statement released by his lawyers. And in an interview, he said it was a jarring
contrast to the accommodations the blind have increasingly gained in society.
“I talk to my doctor online. I order through Amazon. I participate in every kind of commerce and banking and education ... sort of the sidewalk of the 21st century,” Bashin said.
State government websites are mostly effective as well, he said, but in this case, “something went horribly wrong.”
The state Department of Parks and Recreation declined to comment on the lawsuit or the adequacy of its website, saying only that it “has been and remains committed to ensuring accessibility for all persons.” The contractor, Conduent Inc., could not be reached for comment.
Conduent, a former subsidiary of Xerox Corp., won a parks and recreation contract in 2015 to redesign the online reservation services. Bashin’s suit, filed in Alameda County Superior Court, said Conduent told the state it would test the website extensively for accessibility and later “fraudulently claimed” that the site was accessible to the blind.
In fact, the suit said, many pages of the website lack the titles, headings or images that allow screen-reader software to identify the material and read it aloud to a blind user, flaws that would have been disclosed by “even minimal testing.”
“It doesn’t talk. You’re dead in the water,” Bashin said.
Bashin, 64, a Berkeley resident, has been executive director/CEO since 2010 of LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, which provides education and support services to about 3,000 people and resources for more than 100,000 blind or visually impaired Bay Area residents.
“I’m a part of the extended blind community, and the attitude’s the same” for state parks reservations, he said. “Beg, borrow or steal a sighted friend, or pay a reader to go in and make a reservation.”
He owns a tent trailer and, like other avid campers, needs the state system to reserve a spot at coveted sites that book up months in advance.
“I don’t want to be always dependent on somebody else’s adventure,” Bashin said.
The suit has a history. Attorney Timothy Elder, whose firm represents blind and disabled clients, filed the first version under seal in January 2018 to give Attorney General Xavier Becerra a chance to look into the case and decide whether to take it over. Becerra’s office asked for several extensions and finally decided in March not to intervene, said Anna Levine, a lawyer with the firm.
Meanwhile, Bashin filed a separate damage claim with Parks and Recreation, which quickly rejected it, saying the issue should be resolved in court. While the department has not publicly defended Conduent’s work, “nothing has been fixed,” Elder said.
The firm publicly filed a revised suit against the contractor this month. Under a California triple-damage law, it seeks reimbursement to the state of three times the money it paid for services that failed to deliver what the company promised. It also seeks damages and attorneys’ fees for Bashin, and a shutdown of any computer operation that interferes with “his right to be free from discrimination.” Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter:@BobEgelko