Internet Architecture and Disability

The Internet is essential for education, employment, information, and cultural and democratic participation. For tens of millions of people with disabilities in the United States, barriers to accessing the Internet—including the visual presentation of information to people who are blind or visually impaired, the aural presentation of information to people who are deaf or hard of hearing, and the persistence of Internet technology, interfaces, and content without regard to prohibitive cognitive load for people with cognitive and intellectual disabilities—collectively pose one of the most significant civil rights issues of the information age. Yet disability law lacks a comprehensive theoretical approach for fully facilitating Internet accessibility. The prevailing doctrinal approach to Internet accessibility seeks to treat websites as metaphorical “places” subject to Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which requires places of public accommodations to be accessible to people with disabilities. While this place-centric approach to Title III has succeeded to a significant degree in making websites accessible over the last two decades, large swaths of the Internet—more broadly construed to include Internet technologies beyond websites—remain inaccessible to millions of people with a variety of disabilities. As limitations of a place-based approach to Title III become clearer, a new framework for disability law is needed in an increasingly intermediated Internet. Leveraging the Internet-law literature on perspectives, this article recognizes the place-centric approach to Title III as normatively and doctrinally “internal,” in the terminology of Internet-law scholars. It offers a framework for supplementing this internal approach with an external approach that contemplates the layered architecture of the Internet, including its constituent content, web and non-web applications, access networks operated by Internet service providers, and devices and the role of disability and other bodies of law, particularly including telecommunications law and attendant policy issues, such as net neutrality, in making them accessible

Copyright and Disability

A vast array of copyrighted works—books, video programming, software, podcasts, video games, and more—remain inaccessible to people with disabilities. International efforts to adopt limitations and exceptions to copyright law that permit third parties to create and distribute accessible versions of books for people with print disabilities have drawn some attention to the role that copyright law plays in inhibiting the accessibility of copyrighted works. However, copyright scholars have not meaningfully engaged with the role that copyright law plays in the broader tangle of disability rights

Copyright and Disability

A vast array of copyrighted works—books, video programming, software, podcasts, video games, and more—remain inaccessible to people with disabilities. International efforts to adopt limitations and exceptions to copyright law that permit third parties to create and distribute accessible versions of books for people with print disabilities have drawn some attention to the role that copyright law plays in inhibiting the accessibility of copyrighted works. However, copyright scholars have not meaningfully engaged with the role that copyright law plays in the broader tangle of disability rights

Beyond the Marrakesh VIP Treaty: Typology of copyright access-enabling provisions for persons with disabilities

This paper builds upon the evidence drawn from a scoping study on access to copyright works by persons with disabilities. It identifies and discusses specific access‐enabling technologies for persons with aural, cognitive, physical, and visual disabilities and how they are affected by the exercise of exclusive rights. It shows how, and the extent to which states\u27 ratification of the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired, or Otherwise Print Disabled (Marrakesh Treaty) has enabled the making of accessible format of copyright works for persons with disabilities. To this end, the paper examines patterns and trends of accessible format enabling provisions in the copyright laws of World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) member states

Beyond the Marrakesh VIP Treaty: Typology of copyright access-enabling provisions for persons with disabilities

This paper builds upon the evidence drawn from a scoping study on access to copyright works by persons with disabilities. It identifies and discusses specific access‐enabling technologies for persons with aural, cognitive, physical, and visual disabilities and how they are affected by the exercise of exclusive rights. It shows how, and the extent to which states\u27 ratification of the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired, or Otherwise Print Disabled (Marrakesh Treaty) has enabled the making of accessible format of copyright works for persons with disabilities. To this end, the paper examines patterns and trends of accessible format enabling provisions in the copyright laws of World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) member states

A quantitative assessment of distributions and sources of tropospheric halocarbons measured in Singapore.

This work reports the first ground-based atmospheric measurements of 26 halocarbons in Singapore, an urban-industrial city-state in Southeast (SE) Asia. A total of 166 whole air canister samples collected during two intensive 7 Southeast Asian Studies (7SEAS) campaigns (August-October 2011 and 2012) were analyzed for C1-C2 halocarbons using gas chromatography-electron capture/mass spectrometric detection. The halocarbon dataset was supplemented with measurements of selected non-methane hydrocarbons (NMHCs), C1-C5 alkyl nitrates, sulfur gases and carbon monoxide to better understand sources and atmospheric processes. The median observed atmospheric mixing ratios of CFCs, halons, CCl4 and CH3CCl3 were close to global tropospheric background levels, with enhancements in the 1-17% range. This provided the first measurement evidence from SE Asia of the effectiveness of Montreal Protocol and related national-scale regulations instituted in the 1990s to phase-out ozone depleting substances (ODS). First- and second-generation CFC replacements (HCFCs and HFCs) dominated the atmospheric halocarbon burden with HFC-134a, HCFC-22 and HCFC-141b exhibiting enhancements of 39-67%. By combining near-source measurements in Indonesia with receptor data in Singapore, regionally transported peat-forest burning smoke was found to impact levels of several NMHCs (ethane, ethyne, benzene, and propane) and short-lived halocarbons (CH3I, CH3Cl, and CH3Br) in a subset of the receptor samples. The strong signatures of these species near peat-forest fires were potentially affected by atmospheric dilution/mixing during transport and by mixing with substantial urban/regional backgrounds at the receptor. Quantitative source apportionment was carried out using positive matrix factorization (PMF), which identified industrial emissions related to refrigeration, foam blowing, and solvent use in chemical, pharmaceutical and electronics industries as the major source of halocarbons (34%) in Singapore. This was followed by marine and terrestrial biogenic activity (28%), residual levels of ODS from pre-Montreal Protocol operations (16%), seasonal incidences of peat-forest smoke (13%), and fumigation related to quarantine and pre-shipment (QPS) applications (7%)

Communications Law and Policy: Cases and Materials (Edition 8.0)

This is the most current edition of this book. Disclaimer: This book is intended to be used for academic and reference purposes only. The publisher and authors are not rendering legal or professional advice and this book is not a substitute for such advice. Any opinions expressed in this book are the authors&rsquo; alone and should not be imputed to their employers or affiliated organizations. This text has gone through eight editions across nearly a quarter century. The first edition appeared in 2001, published by Aspen Law &amp; Business. The next three editions were published by Foundation Press, up to 2012. In 2016, Jerry Kang added Alan Butler as a co-author, and we decided to self-publish the fifth edition. Even back then the costs of legal casebooks had gotten out-of-hand, and legal publishers were doing little more than binding pages into a physical item. So, we decided to cut out the intermediary and provide substantial cost savings for students. In 2023, Blake Reid joined the author team, and we took the further step of releasing edition 7.5 of the book as a free PDF under a Creative Commons license. We&rsquo;ve now reached the substantially revised eighth edition. Throughout all editions, the book has retained one fundamental pedagogical principle: Organize learning first by concepts, then by industry. Our goal has been to prioritize a deeper conceptual understanding over industry-specific details because industries, and the technologies that make them possible, are always in flux. The current list of concepts is: (1) power, (2) entry, (3) pricing, (4) indecent content, (5) access, (6) classification, (7) internet platforms, and (8) privacy. The book devotes a chapter to each concept, with the first four chapters exploring a particular concept across multiple industries ranging from legacy telephony, broadcast, and cable TV to modern day internet. Chapters 5 and 6 jointly tackle the concepts of access and classification, with Chapter 5 focusing particularly on access issues in legacy industries and Chapter 6 examining how the legal classification of internet service providers has shaped access policy in the context of net neutrality. Chapter 7 shifts upward in the internet&rsquo;s layer stack, to explore the responsibility of internet platforms for the content that they host. The final chapter surveys communications privacy topics that are appropriate for both communications law courses and privacy law courses. Although law and technology have evolved over the past quarter century, the book&rsquo;s pedagogical commitments have remained the same, even as we have updated, simplified, and pruned. One word of caution to faculty and students alike: the Supreme Court&rsquo;s titanic decisions in Loper Bright and NetChoice on the last opinion day of the 2023&ndash;2024 term (just weeks before the release of this edition) are likely to have enormous, difficult-to-predict impacts on the future of American communications law. We have done our level best in this edition&rsquo;s updates to set the table for vibrant conversations in your classrooms about the shifting administrative and constitutional law foundations of this field. But caveat emptor: things may evolve significantly and unpredictably over the next year. We encourage an especially high degree of situational awareness.</p

The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: measuring structure growth using passive galaxies

We explore the benefits of using a passively evolving population of galaxies to measure the evolution of the rate of structure growth between z=0.25 and z=0.65 by combining data from the SDSS-I/II and SDSS-III surveys. The large-scale linear bias of a population of dynamically passive galaxies, which we select from both surveys, is easily modeled. Knowing the bias evolution breaks degeneracies inherent to other methodologies, and decreases the uncertainty in measurements of the rate of structure growth and the normalization of the galaxy power-spectrum by up to a factor of two. If we translate our measurements into a constraint on sigma_8(z=0) assuming a concordance cosmological model and General Relativity (GR), we find that using a bias model improves our uncertainty by a factor of nearly 1.5. Our results are consistent with a flat Lambda Cold Dark Matter model and with GR.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS (clarifications added, results and conclusions unchanged

Communications Law and Policy: Cases and Materials (Edition 7.5)

This book is intended to be used for academic and reference purposes only. The publisher and authors are not rendering legal or professional advice and this book is not a substitute for such advice. Any opinions expressed in this book are the authors&rsquo; alone and should not be imputed to their employers or affiliated organizations.</p

Clustering of Photometric Luminous Red Galaxies II: Cosmological Implications from the Baryon Acoustic Scale

A new determination of the sound horizon scale in angular coordinates is presented. It makes use of ~ 0.6 x 10^6 Luminous Red Galaxies, selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey imaging data, with photometric redshifts. The analysis covers a redshift interval that goes from z=0.5 to z=0.6. We find evidence of the Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) signal at the ~ 2.3 sigma confidence level, with a value of theta_{BAO} (z=0.55) = (3.90 \pm 0.38) degrees, including systematic errors. To our understanding, this is the first direct measurement of the angular BAO scale in the galaxy distribution, and it is in agreement with previous BAO measurements. We also show how radial determinations of the BAO scale can break the degeneracy in the measurement of cosmological parameters when they are combined with BAO angular measurements. The result is also in good agreement with the WMAP7 best-fit cosmology. We obtain a value of w_0 = -1.03 \pm 0.16 for the equation of state parameter of the dark energy, Omega_M = 0.26 \pm 0.04 for the matter density, when the other parameters are fixed. We have also tested the sensitivity of current BAO measurements to a time varying dark energy equation of state, finding w_a = 0.06 \pm 0.22 if we fix all the other parameters to the WMAP7 best-fit cosmology.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, Accepted for publication to MNRA