[blindlaw] Court Rules that National Conference of Bar Examiners Must Provide Individualized Testing Accommodations to Blind Law School Graduate

[James Pepper]

Well this has always been the dodge of companies, schools and institutions
to prevent access by claiming that content is theoretically accessible, when
in fact it is practically not accessible.  This divide between theory and
reality needs to be broken down and attacked because it is the crucial
factor in whether there is access or not.

Colleges claim that their applications forms are accessible to the blind and
yet they are not even close.  They claim accessibility by testing their web
pages with programs such as Bobby which no longer exists.  they don't
actually test their accessibility with anything used by the blind.

I was over at a local university and they claimed online application for
employment was accessible to the blind because they just hired a blind
person who did not make any complaint about the form.  The form is not even
close to being accessible, it was clear that the person got someone to help
them fill it out.  This institution that has 1200 employees considers itself
accessible because they have one blind employee.

Practical useful accessibility should be the goal of any action, where it
can be demonstrated that the content is accessible using the products the
blind use on a normal basis.  If it is accessible to one program it should
be accessible to another.   I can do that with my process.

Also since this is a legal list, I think that the blind should demand that
there be a "Meeting of the Minds" in all contracts, forms and documents.

The way we have it now is that Party A makes a document.  Party B must use
many different processes and programs to try to determine what Party A
meant.  That document is usually different than what Party A meant but
visually it is the same document as Party A's document.  Where is the
"Meeting of the Minds?"

Why is it Party B's responsibility to present Party A's position?

Could this be used to challenge every contract, form and document presented
to the blind?

Also given the state of things today it is perfectly possible for Party B to
receive content that is not the intention of Party A or is purposely not the
same content.    It gets even worse because some screen readers read
different types of content in the same document so the output is different.

I am saying the blind do not get all of the information and when they
receive it, it is not necessarily the content that is in the document.  It
can be misleading, whether intentional or not.  I would think that insurance
companies would have a problem with businesses sending out content that is
not checked to see if the content is accurate to the blind.

This content is usually never checked, very few people actually test their
content with screen readers, because if they did they would have corrected
their errors by now, I mean this is obvious!

So I was wondering if all of the current content should be challenged in
court.  For instance what about social security lawyers, why couldn't they
challenge all of the decisions of the Social Security Department for not
making their content accessible to the blind.  Challenge all the Social
Security Applications that failed.

James Pepper