The Department of Financial Services' cybersecurity regulations just reached another phase-in milestone, so let’s discuss the relationship between high security and disabled customers. One cybersecurity system that vendors offer automatically deletes messages you send so they can’t be stolen by hackers. Messages with confidential information can’t be printed and can’t be saved on the recipient’s computer. These systems often disable “screen scrapers” that allow the recipient to capture a picture of the screen. Unfortunately, this may make it impossible for blind customers to “listen” to the message you send because their listening software or hardware is based on a screen scraper technology. 

Today’s Takeaway? If you implement any system that is designed to provide enhanced security, make sure that it doesn’t limit access using technology that discriminates against the disabled.

Jay L. Hack is available at jlh@gdblaw.com.