Hello Everyone,
please forward the following information on to as many people as you can.
Advocacy Inc. is pleased to announce the creation of the Sign-Up Fund, a fund to assist lawyers in representing deaf clients here in Texas. Please see press release below. They are hosting a press conference on Monday, May 14, at 1:00 at Advocacy, Inc at 7800 Shoal Creek Blvd. Austin, TX to celebrate the fund and increase publicity about access issues generally.
Getting the word out via TV and news is crucial to their education campaign among the legal and deaf communities about the ADA! Please help them by circulating this press release and RSVP to Lucy Wood ([email protected]) as to whether or not you or a representative from your agency will be present at the press release. With enough deaf leaders and interested participants, they hope to attract the kind of media attention that will really educate the masses about the existence of the fund.
Let them know if you can come! Tell others that may be interested!
Thanks!
News Release
CONTACT:
FOR RELEASE
Contact’s Name: Lucy Wood
Phone: (512) 538-8728; (512) 454- 4816 x 322 (x 327 assistant Jesse Treadaway)
Fax: (512) 302- 4936
E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]
Press Conference To Be Held Monday, May 14, at 1 p.m. at Advocacy, Inc., 7800 Shoal Creek Boulevard, Austin, Texas 78757.
TEXAS LAWYERS REACH OUT TO THE DEAF COMMUNITY
Fund Will Help Lawyers to Pay for Interpreters to Assist Deaf Clients
Austin, Texas — Advocacy, Inc., a non-profit disability law organization serving people with disabilities in Texas, announced today the creation of the Sign Up Fund – a sign language interpreter fund that will assist Texas lawyers in understanding and accommodating the legal needs of the deaf. The Disability Issues Committee of the State Bar of Texas, which will administer the fund, is to receive twenty thousand dollars in a start-up grant from the Texas Bar Foundation, which awards grants twice annually in an effort to improve legal services to under-served populations in Texas. The Sign Up Fund will help lawyers in Texas pay for sign language interpreters in order to assist deaf clients and ensure compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
The ADA, which covers places of public accommodations including law offices, requires a lawyer to accept clients regardless of disability and provide the requisite “auxiliary aids,” including sign language interpreter services, necessary to ensure effective communication where doing so would not create an “undue burden” on the law office. Deaf clients often need sign language interpreters to understand their lawyers: thirty percent of the deaf population leaves school functionally illiterate – i.e., they read at a third grade level or below – making written communication difficult or ineffective. And, contrary to the widespread myth about the utility of speech-reading for the deaf, no more than twenty to thirty percent of spoken English is visible on the lips, and even the most talented deaf speech-readers routinely experience miscommunication. “A common complaint in the deaf community is the inability to find an attorney who not only understands the requirements of the A
DA, but is also willing to comply with it,” says Faye Kuo, the Deaf Rights Specialist at Advocacy, Inc. “This fund will help lawyers understand the language needs of the deaf client and help the deaf client get needed legal assistance.”
Similar efforts in several midwestern states and in one New York community have attempted to address these issues with encouraging results. However, the State Bar of Texas is the first state bar to tackle the problem systemically by setting up a fund for interpreter dollars. “We are pleased that the Texas Bar Foundation has prioritized these access issues in Texas and has supported a means to share the financial burden,” said Mitchell Katine, Chair of the Disability Issues Committee. “We hope that our work on this fund will be expanded to meet the needs of all deaf clients in Texas and create a template for use in other states.”
Under the terms of the grant, lawyers at Advocacy, Inc., a non-profit legal services organization with experience representing deaf clients, will provide state-wide training to bar associations about the Sign Up Fund and about ADA compliance. “We are very excited to have this opportunity to educate Texas lawyers about both ADA compliance and about the needs of the deaf community in Texas,” said Lucy Wood, a lawyer with Advocacy, Inc. who focuses on representing deaf individuals in ADA actions. “This money will provide many deaf people, many of whom have had no prior access to legal services or who have not understood their lawyers in the past, with the opportunity to access needed legal services.”
The State Bar of Texas created the Texas Bar Foundation as the charitable arm of the lawyers of Texas in 1965. The Foundation is the largest bar foundation of its kind in the nation, and it is renowned for its ongoing effort to aid the public through its charitable grant making to justice-related causes. To date, more than $9 million in grants have been given by the Foundation to benefit the people of Texas. These grants have been awarded for projects and programs that provide legal services for the needy, education to the public, and improvements within the legal profession and the administration of justice.
The Texas Bar Foundation is comprised of more than 7,000 Fellows representing the top one-third of one percent of the State Bar of Texas membership. Election as a Fellow of the Texas Bar Foundation is a mark of distinction recognizing excellence in service to the legal profession.
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