[blindlaw] Difficulties with court transcripts in PDF format and JAWS

[Susan Kelly]

Our court of appeals loads the transcripts for cases to its website, which is becoming increasingly inaccessible, thanks to the use of semi-described images on at least half of its links instead of properly labeled link-boxes.  I can navigate around that, albeit slowly, by continuing to click through each link (they don't list well) until I hear what seems to be the proper link for whatever it is I need to do.  The real problem comes in once I have accessed my case file and try to listen to the transcripts themselves.  Some are PDF, while others are simply .tif or .jpg scans.  On top of that, even the PDF files have not been properly OCRd, or so it seems, as they will not read through continuously despite my settings in Adobe and JAWS.

My assistant has tried to circumvent this issue by downloading the file to our office network.  The problem persists, though, with the narration stopping at then of each page; using a "page down" or "ctrl page down" command is ineffective, as reading starts back up mid-page; I thus have to advance it one line forward (which does not read) and then back up one and start the "read all" command again to read each page.  This is very time-consuming and annoying, and I have to assume that it is, at least in part, the result of the manner in which the court reporter has transcribed the documents.

Does anyone have any suggestions how to tackle this problem?  Also, does anyone know how I would word a polite letter to the reporters / courts to suggest that these documents be better prepared?  Because I work in the juvenile court, our time limits are extremely short and this is a time waste that I really would like to avoid.

Thanks!