[blindlaw] ExamSoft Update

[Elizabeth Rene]

Thank you all for your comments on ExamSoft and what your bar associations 
and the NCBE have done re your bar exam accommodations.

Here's my take on this subject.

First, I talked with a tech support person from ExamSoft and found, at least 
from him, that none of their tech support people know anything about 
accessibility.  Their software developers didn't build it into the program. 
This guy did know about JAWS and VoiceOver independently, though.  He 
couldn't tell me whether VoiceOver would work with ExamSoft, though Apple is 
encouraging companies who develop software for OSX to make VoiceOver 
compatibility part of their package.

I do expect to be exempted from using ExamSoft, though I haven't gotten the 
official word yet.

But my question is this:  Why are a majority of state court systems, bar 
associations, and law schools contracting with a company noncompliant with 
the ADA more than two decades after its adoption, and nearly 40 years after 
the adoption of Section 504?

Should we blind professionals keep on accepting the status of supplicants, 
forever seeking exemptions and special conditions under which to take our 
qualifying exams and do our jobs when universally accessible technology 
could make that unnecessary?

Should the courts, the agencies who define and regulate our profession, and 
the schools who train us not be held accountable to uphold the laws they 
teach and interpret?

My view is that ExamSoft, and those who fail to hold it accountable, should 
be called on the carpet.  The argument, "we exempt our blind students from 
using ExamSoft," should go the way of "You don't need your cane/guide dog, 
we have someone here to lead you."

What gives me standing to rant?

The bar exam security policy.

ExamSoft is designed to segregate the bar exam from everything else on a 
laptop so there's no question of a student's cheating.  That too is why 
examinees have to undergo a near strip-search before entering the test site. 
You leave your laqp top case outside and carry in your bare necessities in a 
quart-sized plastic bag, just as though you were facing a TSA inspection.

Any non-ExamSoft accommodation has to meet security policy requirements.

One's own laptop, full of bar exam materials, doesn't do that.

So, in my pre-exam anxiety, I envision showing up at a 
previously-undisclosed testing site and offered the use of an unfamiliar 
computer, running an operating system I haven't used yet, with JAWS 
configured by someone else, and with no time to tweak it.  Yes, I admit to 
pre-exam jitters.

I could go to a library and learn Windows 7 and JAWS 13 (I use JAWS 10 on 
Windows XP), but who has time to do that during the bar review?

This is what I've done, for what it's worth.  I've gone out and bought an 
Apple iBook with a big hard drive and VoiceOver, which I love.  I'm putting 
iWork on it to write the exam, and nowhere on the drive will there be any 
bar review material.  Later, after the exam, I'm putting Windows 7 and JAWS 
on a corner of that big hard drive, I'm going to learn them both at home, 
and live in the best of both worlds of accessibility.

Armed with my own laptop and a word program I've had time to practice using 
writing bar prep essays, I hope to ace that exam.  And if I fall on my face, 
I'll get up and do it again.

Wish me luck!

Elizabeth