[blindlaw] Accessing restricted court documents

[Dittman, Robert]

Hello Paul, please excuse any typos or spelling errors as I am dictating this message to you using my iPhone. I am a criminal defense attorney and I frequently use the discovery system from the District Attorney's Office. The problem with this system, is that it utilizes scanned images as PDF documents. Such documents are not text PDFs, but are rather scanned images that my screen reader will not read. I see absolutely no problem with your Your assistant reading the document to you, or, in the alternative, you printing the text based PDF or image-based PDFs and scanning it using an OCR program such as open book I would speak with the custodian of the documents to see what reasonable accommodation they may have in place. The basic prime directive, is that if you have been granted access to the document then you must be able to move heaven and earth to gain access to that document using what ever modification that is necessary in order for you to access the information of that document. I hope that this helps if you wish to speak with me over the telephone or via email in trying to put some of this into action please feel free to contact me.
Robert Dittman, Esq. 
Atty. and Counselor at Law 
(210) 389 – 3388 
Rdittman at me.com


Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 15, 2013, at 15:37, "Paul Wick" <wickps at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Colleagues,
> 
> I have a question concerning access to restricted judicial records by
> blind people, (I am a blind attorney, but this is for my own research
> not for a client.)
> 
> I have been granted access to view a restricted document in a rural
> courthouse, but I was wondering what list members think would be a
> more reasonable accomodation of my disability either to (1) execute a
> power of attorney and have someone else view it, and allow that person
> to take notes, or (2) alternatively, if my presence is required, that
> my assistant be allowed to accompany me to wherever the restricted
> documents are stored and that they be allowed to take notes.
> 
> Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> Thanks for your time.
> 
> Paul
> 
> _______________________________________________
> blindlaw mailing list
> blindlaw at nfbnet.org
> http://host.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindlaw_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for blindlaw:
> http://host.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindlaw_nfbnet.org/rdittman%40stmarytx.edu