[blindlaw] Reply to Brandon Young

[Patrick Brendan O'Reilly]

I really don't get your point. I'm advocating for Westlaw, Lexis, and other
legal services vendors to provide the same features (locate in result, some
means of highlighting search terms, ability to move to each occurrence of
words in your search terms) to blind/visually impaired students that the
vendors provide to sighted users.

I, too, think that blind/visually impaired people need to develop skills to
succeed as blind/visually impaired people. I don't think that this
proposition and having access to the same features are mutually exclusive
goals.

As to your point about the bill of rights.

That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. A positive statement of rights
necessarily has to be inclusive. From a pragmatic standpoint, it will be
easier to get the ABA House of Delegates to move on a bill of rights that
entails positive statements of rights for ALL students. If, instead, the ABA
House of Delegates is presented with one bill of rights for the blind,
another for the dyslexic, another for the deaf, etc., they will be less
likely to act especially if the statements of rights repeat one another.

I'd even consider adding blind/visually impaired specific items to a bill of
rights for all disabled students. But presenting a wholly separate bill of
rights for the blind strikes me as untenable.