[blindlaw] dealing with PDF documents posted on the internet

Wed Jul 22 03:06:57 UTC 2015

You should not have to pay to litigate your case on your own. These cases 
are generally litigated by the DOJ or public interest agencies that take 
these cases. Another option is to bring this matter to the attention of your 
state affiliate if you haven't done so.
Chuck

-----Original Message----- 
From: Susan Kelly via blindlaw
Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2015 10:45 AM
To: 'Blind Law Mailing List'
Cc: Susan Kelly
Subject: Re: [blindlaw] dealing with PDF documents posted on the internet

Been there, done that, unfortunately.  Our ADA officer is very helpful, but 
he has no authority over the courts because of how are county is run, and 
seemingly very limited power over our county IT, the new director of which 
made a very discriminatory comment in front of an entire roomful of people 
present for a meeting on the subject of the network and machinery last 
month.  In fact, the ADA rep thinks I may have to resort to litigation to 
get compliance from the multiple players involved, which I can neither 
afford in terms of money or time.  In the meantime, my work is still due, so 
I am trying to find other ways to handle this.

I will let you all know if anything improves, though!

-----Original Message-----
From: blindlaw [mailto:blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Reyazuddin, 
Yasmin via blindlaw
Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2015 10:24 AM
To: Blind Law Mailing List
Cc: Reyazuddin, Yasmin
Subject: Re: [blindlaw] dealing with PDF documents posted on the internet

Hi Susan,
I would talk with the ADA compliance officer in the county. Make them aware 
of inaccessible documents. I know that section 508 applies to federal 
government but some counties do want to follow it. Website accessibility is 
now part of the ADA compliance. Check the new document on the website. 
www.ada.gov has a new document on state & local government guidelines.

Let us know if you have success.
Yasmin Reyazuddin
Aging & Disability Services
Montgomery County Government
Department of Health & Human Services
401 Hungerford Drive (3rd floor)
Rockville MD 20850
240-777-0311 (MC311)
240-777-1556 (personal)
240-777-1495 (fax)
office hours 8:30 am 5:00 pm
Languages English, Hindi, Urdu, Braille

This message may contain protected health information or other information 
that is confidential or privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, 
please contact the sender by return mail and destroy any copies of this 
material.

Thank you.

-----Original Message-----
From: blindlaw [mailto:blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Susan Kelly 
via blindlaw
Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2015 1:13 PM
To: Blind Law Mailing List; (gui-talk at nfbnet.org)
Cc: Susan Kelly
Subject: [blindlaw] dealing with PDF documents posted on the internet

Apologies in advance for this cross-list posting, but I am desperate to find 
some workable answers.

I am a county public defender whose duties include juvenile appeals.  The 
court websites in our county are of varying levels of accessibility, and 
even within those varying levels, more differences are permitted to exist 
because the court clerks all have different methods and standards.  When it 
comes to transcripts filed in the court of appeals, individual reporters 
upload their documents to the COA in the manner they see fit.  This will 
generally be in a PDF format, but it is generated by one of two proprietary 
programs available to them through the state office of the courts to 
generate written documents from stenographic notes.  These programs contain 
bizarre coding that, when the PDF is created within the program (as opposed 
to being scanned physically from printed paper) somehow is embedded in the 
PDF.  This causes everything from tiny blocks of the page being read in a 
non-sensical, patchwork fashion, to reading halting at the end of each page 
of the document, despite  the settings within JAWS for a continuous reading 
experience.

So far, the only even semi-effective route around this that we have found is 
to physically print out the transcripts, scan them on our already 
over-worked scanner, and then to run them through our equally taxed OCR 
program, which ironically is also provided by Adobe.  Neither a print-to-PDF 
followed by OCR of the document nor the OCR program in JAWS itself is 
effective on our network for this task, thanks to peculiarities of the 
county network environment.  I do not have the luxury of purchasing any new 
or different equipment; even if I did, IT likely would not allow it to be 
run on "their" network.

All that being said, is there a quicker / easier solution that I am missing? 
I have changed the JAWS settings countless times, to no avail, which may 
also be a function of our network environment.

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