In October 2014, SFBay Area ISOC Chapter President Leah Symekher and Vice President, Konstantin Kalaitzidis held the first meeting with Ms. Haben Girma, a Skadden Fellow Attorney and Advocate with the Disability Rights Act (DRA, www.dralegal.org) firm in Berkeley, California.  The meeting with Haben Girma was a great introduction to the real everyday challenges that people with blind and deaf disabilities face.  While there are many areas that these challenges exist, our discussions focused on technology and Internet access.

We concluded the meeting with a commitment for SFBay Area ISOC Chapter to provide a platform for Haben to inform and educate our community, specifically Silicon Valley as the innovative center for technology, of these challenges and help to table the discussion for suitable solutions. This meeting led to the TechWomen-Mozilla event where Haben was a guest speaker.

 Here is a link to the ISOC Disability and Special needs Chapter: http://www.isocdisab.org/

Leah Symekher

SFBay Area ISOC Chapter, President