[blindlaw] Response to Rod Alcidonis' Westlaw post

[Steve Jacobson]

For those of you who do not know me, I am not a lawyer but rather one of those who volunteers to help dave with 
technical aspects of these lists.  I thought that it might be worth mentioning that we have had WestLaw personnel read 
this list.  I do not know if there is anyone subscribed right now, but there might be good value in being specific with 
problems.  From what I know, and my knowledge is not detailed, WestLaw is sincerely concerned about making 
information available to blind lawyers, and maybe some of these problems are worth bringing to their attention in a well 
thought out manner.

Text representations are going to miss some of the things mentioned here, that is always the case.  I have also known of 
blind people who claim that text only is the only thing that is accessible even though they miss some of the capabilities 
mentioned here.  There is at least some possibility that the text-only option has been implemented at the request of some 
blind people, so some of this may be a bit confusing to WestLaw..

On Sat, 26 Aug 2006 22:55:08 -0600, Patrick Brendan O'Reilly wrote:

>I never found Westlaw's text-only option very useful. When you use the
>text-only product, you lose many of the features that speed up research for
>sighted users. In particular, the text-only product eliminates the ability
>to "locate in result," which allows sighted users to narrow their research.
>Additionally, the text-only product drops all highlighted terms and other
>graphics aids that help sighted users find relevant material faster.

>Unfortunately, I couldn't get either ZoomText nor Kurzweil to work well with
>Westlaw's frames. I eventually wound up printing to the Kurzweil printer and
>going at it that way. In terms of quickly searching for information using
>Westlaw I found it to be an exercise in futility.

>Brendan O'Reilly


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