[blindLaw] information

[Steve Jacobson]

Roderick,

I am not a lawyer, but I have some thoughts from a technical and general perspective.  In the long run, you will have to get a sense of how much handwriting you will need to read.  Other lawyers here can answer that better than I can, but it is almost certain that this will be a recurring issue.  At this point, there just isn't anything that will reliably convert handwriting into characters that allow us to examine with a screen reader.  Seeing AI was suggested in another note but while I have occasionally gotten it to read certain bits of handwriting, I don't think it will reliably read handwriting for legal purposes.  There are times, though, when reading a paper document using an iPhone will be valuable.  Seeing AI will do that as will VoiceDream Scanner and Supersense.  All three tend to read different things well, so it makes sense to know all three well.  If you are a JAWS user, you have access to Convenient OCR which can also work, but none of these will reliably read handwriting all of the time or even very completely.

I am not sure what issue prevents you from getting information from "Be My Eyes" from a PDF, although it might be an issue to run that app and an app that reads PDF's.  Did you try displaying it on another computer screen and have them read the document from that screen?  If the document isn't too long, printing it out on paper would give you another option to try with Be My Eyes.  If you need this specific document to move ahead with a project right now, figuring out how to make it possible for Be My Eyes to read it might be a good solution if you don't have anybody available to help you out for the short term.  However, you will want to take an organized approach.  You don't want them to read the whole document from start to finish.  You will want them to see where the handwriting is.  There may be large portions of the document you can read that is regular text and you might be able to have them concentrate on the areas that have handwriting.

You said you could only read 20% of the document.  Is that because 80% is written by hand or are there other issues?  When reading a PDF on a personal computer, there are options that can sometimes help if you are getting the text out of order.  Acrobat has an option to read from left to right, top to bottom, or Infer reading order from document.  Trying both options may result in getting something more satisfactory, but it won't change the handwriting issue.  

If the PDF's are being prepared for you from printed documents, there may be scanner settings that might allow a document to be converted to text more reliably.  It is hard to make suggestions along those lines without more information.

This is likely frustrating for you.  Remember, though, that employers offer internships to find out how creative potential employees are.  It also gives you a chance to experiment to some degree and learn.  Good luck.

Best regards,

Steve Jacobson

-----Original Message-----
From: BlindLaw <blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Roderick Thomas via BlindLaw
Sent: Friday, August 27, 2021 11:05 AM
To: blind law <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Roderick Thomas <rthomas48 at gmail.com>
Subject: [blindLaw] information

Hey Guys, I am going crazy. I am currently working at a criminal defense 
firm as a legal intern. I just recently took the bar exam, but I have 
not received my scores yet. I need to read a criminal arrest report, but 
some parts of the document is write by hand. I tried using AIR, but they 
are so expensive and they really do not transcribe documents. I tried 
using Be My Eyes, but the document is in a PDF, so no volunteer can read 
the document; even if, they take a picture of the document with there 
cell phone. I tried converting the document to a searchable PDF, but 
that was a total nightmare. I could only read twenty percent of the 
document. I spoke with the owner of the law firm, and suggested that 
someone read the document into a MP3, but he said, "No because that 
would not be a good use of his resources." Also, he said, that "Everyone 
must pull there own weight." I tried hiring a part-time Paralegal 
remotely, but she is not working out as well. Moreover, I only make $13 
an hour. The firm is very small with only five people including the 
owner. I am running out of ideas. I love the job, but someone told me, 
that "You cannot be a criminal defense attorney alone. You need an 
assistance. How is that possible, when I have not passed the bar exam?  
Please help! I have only worked at this law firm for two weeks



Sincerely,


Roderick Thomas.


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