[blindLaw] Lexis and Westlaw

[Julie McGinnity]

Hi everyone,

I hope you are having a wonderful weekend. This is my first semester
of law school, and as a part of our legal rhetoric curriculum, we have
to do these research assignments using Lexis and Westlaw. A
representative from each service did trainings with us, and I found
them just short of useless as a blind person. For our first research
assignment, I just figured out the platforms myself and gave myself
extra time to do the work.

I'm sure many of you use or have used Lexis and/or Westlaw on a daily
basis. Any favorite tips? Any advice on which features are
inaccessible? I really don't want to get myself into a mess, needing
to do something on one of those platforms and finding out I can't
access a feature with Jaws.

Also, did any of you have to take trainings on the platforms as law
students? Did you find a way to make them useful? Were you able to get
an accommodation allowing you to skip out on the group training and
meet with a representative individually? Are there representatives at
these companies who know about screen reader access?

I know these are a lot of questions, but I genuinely want to be
successful at legal research. Any kind of advice or whatever you could
give would be so helpful to this struggling 1L.

Thanks much.

-- 
Julie A. McGinnity
MM Vocal Performance, 2015; American University Washington College of
Law, JD Candidate 2023