[blindlaw] Writing the bar exam

Wed Sep 19 13:25:19 UTC 2018

Hi Tai and Graham,

Those are good suggestions. I have already converted it to word, and am cleaning up the formatting as I go, so I'm not sure if asking for another word document at this time would help.

As I read each chapter I cut it into a separate file. This way I have a file for each chapter, instead of one gigantic 1,000 page file.

Someone I know does computer programming and I have approached him about designing html links.

I can try to approach the Law School, but I have found a lot of their help to be lacking, especially in matters outside the actual school itself. I could go on about the improperly formatted resumes they gave me to apply to jobs with, and how it took a friend of mine pointing out how bad they looked visually before I realized there was a problem, and this was after I made it explicit that I needed their help making the information visually presentable.

I reached out to a couple of blind lawyers in Ontario. The two I was able to talk with wrote the bar 30+ years ago, before computers. It would be great talking with someone who wrote the bar in the last 10 years.

I don't know how to add heading styles in a word document or navigate using that. If I could learn a little more about that, it would probably help.

I also don't have a lot of experience using the word find function in a document. I know how to hit control F to search for a specific word, but are there other functions that could help?

Graham, I'll message you off list. Any help you could provide would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Ben Fulton 

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From: Graham Hardy <GHardy at harrisbrun.com>
To: 'Blind Law Mailing List' <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [blindlaw] Writing the bar exam
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Hi Ben,

I wrote the bar in British Columbia and had a similar experience (though a much smaller number of questions). Two things were helpful. First, when I approached the Law Society, they gladly provided me their source files in Microsoft Word format. These were, of course, formatted for printing and I had to clean up their formatting quite a bit. I also applied heading styles so that I could jump around using JAWS quick navigation commands. I knew that many students used indices but I didn't bother trying to rely on those, as I knew that having a page number would only point to a rather large section of a document, given the small font, and it would have taken longer to search things out. In addition to headings, which helped me navigate quickly to places I was very familiar with, I used the text search commands to look for words in areas which I hadn't indexed. Above all, tempting as it may be to use the open book as a crutch, it cannot be emphasised too much that having an open book should be a memory aid and can slow anyone down, sighted or blind, who has to look things up for every question. You should try as much as humanly possible to be familiar with the material.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Graham Hardy | Lawyer? 604-608-2043?|?ghardy at harrisbrun.com?

HARRIS & BRUN LAW CORPORATION?- Barristers & Solicitors
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From: Tai Tomasi <ttomasi at driowa.org>
To: Blind Law Mailing List <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [blindlaw] Writing the bar exam
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Graham Hardy is a member of this list and took the bar in British Columbia. Hopefully, he will chime in. I'm not sure if the exams are similar in each of these provinces. 

Ben, could you pay someone to put headings into the word document or convert it into an HTML document with links? Can you contact other blind attorneys who have taken the bar in Ontario to see how they approached this issue? Are you still affiliated with the university where you attended law school and would they be willing to assist in making the document accessible?   

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-----Original Message-----
From: BlindLaw <blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Ben Fulton via BlindLaw
Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2018 8:38 AM
To: blindlaw at nfbnet.org
Cc: Ben Fulton <bluezinfandel at hotmail.com>
Subject: [blindlaw] Writing the bar exam

Hi all,

I am currently studying for the Ontario bar. It is a two day 480 question exam that covers about 2,000 pages of material.

The exam is open book, and the scores are curved. I'm having a hard time dealing with the index.

Sighted students talk a lot about having tabs, and indexes that they can use to quickly look up the information they need. Time is a large component of the exam, and even though I will have twice as much time, making this a four day exam, I am still concerned about the time to look things up quickly.

For starters, the pdf file they sent was difficult to use, so I converted it to a word file, but this expanded the number of pages. So any index that other people have for this already will not work, because the page numbers won't line up.

Ideally, I would most likely want an html type of document with embedded links, then I could use the jaws find for specific words, and click on links within an index to quickly go to where I need to.

However, I have no idea how to format that.

If anyone has anysuggestions for writing the bar I would appreciate it.

Sincerely,
Ben

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