[blindLaw] assistance with accommodations for visual formatting in law school.

Mon Nov 4 22:43:42 UTC 2024

Yes, I agree with everything Julie says here. Thanks for all of this. I also
had better grades after 1L. 

-----Original Message-----
From: BlindLaw <blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Julie A. Orozco
via BlindLaw
Sent: Monday, November 4, 2024 4:42 PM
To: 'Blind Law Mailing List' <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Julie A. Orozco <kaybaycar at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [blindLaw] assistance with accommodations for visual formatting
in law school.

Hi Natalia,

I encountered similar issues in my first year of law school. If you're
interested, I wrote an article that is in the October Braille monitor about
my experiences in my first year and how I dealt with my schools' resistance
to my advocacy.

I agree with everyone else that getting a human reader is your best bet.
This is a standard accommodation that many blind working professionals use
to spot check their work. I use human readers, and I imagine that many
others on this list do as well. Do not allow your university to call a human
reader an assistant. This is a valid accommodation that you should be
receiving from day one. 

The best way to handle the actual work is to do the best you can on your
own. Use caps lock or insert F to figure out what the font looks like. Learn
about Jaws sound schemes if you can. Things like underlines and changes in
font types you can detect fairly easily with Jaws. You can also read by line
to determine if you are orphaning headings. Double check every citation with
caps lock F to make sure you aren't underline/italicizing spaces. (That was
a big point drainer for me.) 

But you are correct that some things will just work better with sighted
assistance. My university was strict about what certain symbols looked like,
and sometimes, there was no way Jaws was going to tell me if my quotation
marks looked right, for example. I also could not figure out the heading
style my law school wanted. I remember spending hours trying to figure out
how to replicate what they wanted. It was just not something you could do
with Jaws. 

I would keep advocating for the reader. In the meantime, can you ask your
professor for extra time with their teaching assistants? That is what I did
until the law school came through for me. We had writing fellows in our law
school, and my legal writing professor had specific assistants assigned to
her that worked with everyone. I requested extra time to work with them and
asked them to help with some of the formatting stuff I found most tricky.
Asking for extra time with them is not ideal, since they are not readers
trained to work directly with you, and that time you get won't be enough.
But it will work until you get something in place. You can do as much as
possible on your own and then take what you think is the completed product
to the teaching assistants for help. In my experience, these other students
are happy to help. 

I'm sorry you're going through this, and if you have additional questions
for me, feel free to email me off list. My grades significantly improved
after my 1L year, I think, because legal writing was no longer a huge
stresser in my life.

Julie

-----Original Message-----
From: BlindLaw <blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Natalia Sulca via
BlindLaw
Sent: Monday, November 4, 2024 4:18 PM
To: 'Blind Law Mailing List' <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Natalia Sulca <nssulca at gmail.com>
Subject: [blindLaw] assistance with accommodations for visual formatting in
law school.

Hello All,

I'm reaching out for advice regarding a challenging situation I'm facing
with accommodations in my legal writing course. I am currently a 1l. I've
encountered ongoing issues with my school's unwillingness to exempt me from
visual formatting requirements under the Bluebook, such as font color,
precise alignment, italics versus underlining, and other specific
typographic elements. These requirements are heavily visual, yet they
directly impact my grades, even though I have no way to ensure compliance
independently.

Despite repeatedly requesting and being promised accommodations, my school
has yet to deliver any workable solution. I continue to receive grade
deductions for elements I cannot see or verify, like page numbers, font
colors, and specific visual preferences. My professor prefers certain
Bluebook elements to be underlined rather than italicized, which conflicts
with both the instructions and my ability to format accurately with JAWS
limitations. Points are regularly taken off for such details, significantly
affecting my grades.

I have tried explaining that a screen reader cannot convey visual layout,
font color, or alignment with much accuracy, especially if I assign it one
way and word randomly changes it as its prone to happen. I have also
explained  that dictating these elements to someone else is impractical
since I cannot visually guide or verify the end result. Despite my efforts,
the school has been reluctant to implement a content-only grading approach,
which I believe would be a fair and appropriate solution. This has left me
feeling increasingly frustrated, as my academic performance is being
evaluated on factors that are inaccessible to me as a blind student.

I would be very grateful for any advice on how to approach this situation.
Has anyone on this list encountered a similar issue, and if so, what
strategies or resources were helpful? I want to find a way to advocate
effectively for accommodations that allow my work to be assessed on content
and legal understanding, rather than visual formatting elements that I
cannot independently control.

Thank you all for your time and guidance.

Best regards,
Natalia Sulca

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