[blindlaw] ADA and Discovery

Sun Apr 4 02:01:42 UTC 2010

Hello,
I practice criminal law in Chicago with the Public Defenders office.
However, it is done at the appellate and collateral remedies levels, and I
have been able to get State Motions and Briefs in word or regular adobe.
Most of the Assistant State's Attorneys, and Assistant Attorney Generals are
very nice in e-mailing me the electronic file. But this is done on an
individual basis. I'm not certain there is an overall policy by the offices
itself to do that.
Things may be different at the federal level as the various prosecutors and
defense as well as the courts have communicated in an electronic manner for
years.
If you have not already done so, perhaps you should find someone in the
public defenders office and other offices to explain why your assistive
technology cannot handle their documents.
Essentially, I am suggesting if you haven't done so already, make an attempt
to educate and see if this gets the job done.

-----Original Message-----
From: blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Ross Doerr
Sent: Saturday, April 03, 2010 7:27 PM
To: NFBnet Blind Law Mailing List
Subject: Re: [blindlaw] ADA and Discovery

    Hi John:
I don't practice criminal law, and do not have any direct experience in a 
challenge under the ADA to the form of discovery from an adverse party.
The few times it has come up for me, usually involving an issue with the 
State (in my case Maine) a telephone call asking them (usually the attorney 
general's office) to convert it for me has always resolved the problem for 
me. I may get it converted as an RTF, but at least I can read it, and the 
unreadable PDF document that I have from them initialy, can always be used 
as the "referencing document" for court purposes.
What usually happens to me is the other side will scan a document on their 
printer and push the PDF button, and then think that it is now a real PDF 
that can be read by JAWS or the adobe acrobat document reader.
With all due respect to my sighted colleagues, they haven't a clue that all 
PDF's are not created equal, and they think that they have just given you 
what everyone else gets. so, since they have probably read somewhere that 
assistive technology for blind people can read a PDF, your assistive 
technology can handle it from there.
Like I said, most of them havent a clue what "our world" is really like, 
because they haven't had to pay any attention to it before.
This issue is fascinating for me, so by all means please keep the list 
posted on what happens with it. I very much want to know what comes of it 
all.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Ramsey" <joramsey at cox.net>
To: "'NFBnet Blind Law Mailing List'" <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Saturday, April 03, 2010 3:34 PM
Subject: [blindlaw] ADA and Discovery

> Hello All of the Criminal practitioners on the list,
> I practice criminal law here in Florida and have encountered a problem. 
> When
> the State and Public Defender's Offices are providing me with documents,
> they are in a PDF that JAWS reads as blank. As you can imagine the default
> titles of the PDF files can basically nullify any real attempts to 
> discover
> what the document is. My question is: has anyone had to challenge the form
> of discovery under the ADA? If so, what was the outcome?
> Cordially,
> John
>
>
> John A. Ramsey Jr., P.A.
>
> P.O. Box 6063
>
> Gainesville, FL 32627
>
> Phone: (352) 505-6642
>
> Fax: (352) 240-6453
>
>
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