But in 13 lawsuits filed against online retailers last year, her lawyers gave a different impression, saying Kalender couldn't browse the internet without those tools, known as screen readers.
Kalender said she never saw the lawsuits that were filed in her name.
When a reporter from Insider read the sections of the legal complaint to her, she seemed confused.
Courts have been mixed on whether the Americans with Disabilities Act, which allows people to sue hotels, shops, and other “public accommodations” that discriminate, covers websites and apps.
People can recover damages from government agencies and employers that discriminate against them, but they can't in public-accommodations cases, disability-rights lawyer David Ferleger said.
In those cases, they can only win payment of their legal fees.
Some lawyers and serial plaintiffs have created a small cottage industry of these claims, settling for a quick payout and a promise to fix the website.
Over several months in 2020, she was part of a slew of litigation — she reviewed the accessibility of websites, lent her name to lawsuits, and received $500 from each settlement.
Rebecca Roiphe, a professor at New York Law School, said a distortion of disability in a legal complaint in the way Kalender described would be troubling.
Today, wacky C-suite titles are all the rage. Chief amazement officers, chief heart officers, and chief empathy officers are popping up across companies. businessinsider.com/companies-inve…
Your company might operate more compassionately because it hired a chief heart officer, but at the end of the day it's still a business, and that person can still fire you, Limsky writes. businessinsider.com/companies-inve…
Remote work sparked a surge in whistleblower complaints. There's more free time, less risk, and more support to call out wrongdoing when you work from home.
@BrittaLokting explains why so many remote workers are deciding to squeal on their companies. ⬇️
In 2017, Simon Edelman blew the whistle on his former employer, the US Department of Energy, as he leaked photographs to the news site @inthesetimesmag of a meeting between the Energy Secretary Rick Perry and the CEO of one of the largest coal companies.
Data from the Yellowstone Wolf Project hints that it's just the side effect of a protozoan inhabiting our brains in a failed attempt to make more protozoa, Adam Rogers (@jetjocko) writes. ⬇️ businessinsider.com/parasite-cat-f…
Curious about what motivates a wolf to leave its pack, Kira Cassidy, a field biologist with the Yellowstone Wolf Project, and her team hypothesized that a parasitic infection was egging them along. Specifically, a microorganism called Toxoplasma gondii. businessinsider.com/parasite-cat-f…
Toxo, as it's colloquially known, reproduces in cat species but leaps to other hosts like rats, hyena, people, and wolves. Once it takes up residence in a new animal, it’s linked to weird behavior — much of it spurred by an elevated appetite for risk. businessinsider.com/parasite-cat-f…