[blindLaw] Fwd: Accessibility of Discovery Platforms

[Singh, Nandini]

Hi Ger,

I believe your message did indeed go through. I suspect most folks might not have much to say, and I have been working on two projects due at the end of the week, which delayed my response to you. I actually have a bunch to say on the topic. I will, however, try to keep my comments brief.

Legal services support technology, like e-discovery software, generally has plenty to be desired regarding screen reader accessibility. It is very unfortunate because there is no fundamental reason why underlying code could not be written to work better with screen readers. E-discovery platforms are mostly databases (and far from the most sophisticated ones) with an interface that folks without computer science degrees, i.e. lawyers, can feel comfortable using to run searches, review documents, and prepare materials for production.

I have worked--not really--with Relativity, a popular document review platform application, in addition to my firm's in-house one. Both are intensely frustrating to use with JAWS. Items are not labeled well or require a mouse to activate. For browser-based platforms, I have often had to contend with cursor focus issues as well, making it challenging to jump from different parts of the main screen: main document for review, review panel, menu of preferences. As a result, I try to develop a close relationship with litigation support, individuals with the computer science and technical background who maintain the database for the attorneys. I craft searches for them to execute for me. They give me hit counts, and I then request a print to PDF for offline review, or else I refine the search, sometimes with the specialists's input.

The above is not my favorite solution, but it does work and has allowed me to do what I have to do by way of fact development and deposition/interview prep. It does get a bit tricky if I am trying to understand different forks of an email exchange or track down different drafts of a hot/key document, like a final memorandum or slide deck. For that detailed, detective-type work, I enlist the assistance of the paralegal or contract attorney assigned to the matter. We have a call, so I can explain the precise factual context and illuminate the story, as far as I understand from the materials I have at the time, to permit the paralegal or contract attorney to take a deeper dive limited in time and the custodians/people involved in the documents.

I will underscore that even if you cannot use the review platforms, you should learn how they work. You need not know where to click for each command. But you should know what your platform is capable of doing so you can guide someone else to run searches for you, construct review coding or tagging panels for you, retrieve documents for you, or print documents in a specific order for you.

You should also let your organization know and the e-discovery vendor know about the accessibility issue. Software developers really need to see that this is a problem worth the time and attention. Right now, I consider it a victory if I can educate sales reps or designers about JAWS. How and when feedback turns into better product coding, I am not sure. But in the meanwhile, I, like you, still have cases to move forward, so please treat the support staff around you with kindness and respect, because they will help you bridge much of the gap that non-inclusive technology design presents.

And so much for my earlier declared brevity. I write all this out because while I appreciate that many here spend time on Westlaw or Lexis, there are so many other products that lawyers use. People with an investigations or trial practice spend probably years of their lives with e-discovery products, and those products present some very cool features overall but some non-trivial accessibility issues at the same time.

Regards,
Nikki

-----Original Message-----
From: BlindLaw <blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Gerard Sadlier via BlindLaw
Sent: Thursday, March 9, 2023 12:53 AM
To: blindlaw <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Gerard Sadlier <gerard.sadlier at gmail.com>
Subject: [blindLaw] Fwd: Accessibility of Discovery Platforms

[EXTERNAL]

Hi all

I've emailed on this list previously about the accessibility of
discovery review platforms. The platform we have, Reveal, still seems
quite inaccessible. Does anyone have experience with it or indeed with
another platform?

Note, I tried to send this to the list a few days ago but not sure if
it went through or not. If it did, my apologies for a further posting.

Kind regards

Ger

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