[blindlaw] Making the Judicial System More Accessible

[Rahul Bajaj]

Hi All,

I hope this message finds you well. I am a fourth year law student
from India. I am currently working on an initiative with other
disabled lawyers aimed at putting together a list of suggestions for
the consideration of the Chief Justice of India and other key figures
in the government and policy making bodies to make courts more
accessible for disabled lawyers and to make litigation a viable career
choice for a disabled lawyer. To this end, I would be extremely
grateful if you would be so kind as to apprise me of the best
practices that are followed in the United States and other countries
with respect to the following areas for promoting universal access and
providing reasonable accommodation:
1. Accessibility of the filing system using which different documents
such as plaints, written statements, rejoinders and affidavits can be
filed during the course of a lawsuit. More specifically, what special
steps have these platforms taken for promoting universal access?
2. Making the filing process hassle-free for disabled lawyers.
Disabled lawyers face a lot of challenges during the filing stage of
documents because it is difficult for them maintain the level of
specificity and exactitude that the court registries demand for
getting documents effectively filed. In addition, there are no
mechanisms for helping disabled lawyers confront these hyper-technical
objections raised by court registries during the filing process. Most
of the challenges pertain to very unimportant elements of formatting
and things such as the maintenance of right margins, providing proper
space while writing application number, deletion of underlining and
highlighting, etc.
3. Full accessibility of court websites. This would include things
such as removal of captchas, making combo boxes fully accessible,
rendering pages in unicode in order to prevent material in vernacular
languages from interfering with the content of the website, etc. What
strategies have you adopted for confronting these challenges in the
U.S.?
4. Making the physical infrastructure of courts accessible. This would
include things such as installing audio labels outside courtrooms for
lawyers to ascertain the number of the concerned courtroom, making
display boards more accessible, etc. What other best practices can you
suggest in this regard?
Please feel free to reach me off-list if you'd like to discuss this
further or bring any other pain points to my notice. Your suggestions
would be incredibly valuable and will go a long way in helping us
acquire a fuller picture of the concrete solutions that we must
propose.

Best,
Rahul