[il-talk] Fw: Legal Blind VT Law person sues and wins

[Robert A Hansen]

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-----Original Message-----
From: "Robert A. Hansen" <roberthansen1970 at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2011 14:25:53 
To: Robert A.Hansen<roberthansen33 at yahoo.com>
Subject: Legal Blind VT Law person sues and wins


    Legally blind Vt. law student wins 1st big case

Legally blind Vt. law student wins 1st big case
Published August 07, 2011
| Associated Press

MIDDLESEX, Vt. -- Deanna Jones, a third-year law studentwho's legally 
blind and learning disabled, has won her first big court case:her own.

Jones sued the National Conference of Bar Examiners in July,accusing it 
of violating the Americans With Disabilities Act by refusing to lether 
take a key legal ethics exam using a computer with screen access 
softwarethat she has used to read in college and in law school.

Armed with a federal judge's order, she was able to take thetest Friday, 
closely watched by a proctor, test supervisor and someone from theACT, 
Inc. testing company, she said.

"I think I did OK," she said. "I left feelinglike I probably passed it."

Jones, who attends Vermont Law School with hopes ofpracticing disability 
law, needs the Multistate Professional ResponsibilityExam to practice in 
Vermont. The NCBE fought her request and plans to appeal,saying the 
security of its pencil-and-paper test could be jeopardized if 
takenelectronically. The organization had offered instead to have 
someone read thetest to Jones, to let her take the test in Braille, in 
enlarged print, and usean audio CD.

But a judge ruled Tuesday that the examiners had to provideher a laptop 
equipped with the special software. Jones said she was "justemotionally 
overcome" when she finally sat down for the exam.

"I just sort of broke into a fit of bawling for amoment," she said 
Friday afternoon, after nearly six hours of testing."It was unbelievable 
to me what it had taken just to be able to sit inthat chair," she said.

Dan Goldstein, a Baltimore-based lawyer for Jones and theNational 
Federation of the Blind, said he's been involved with four othersimilar 
cases, three of which have been successful, resulting in 
preliminaryinjunctive relief. The federation paid Jones' legal bills.

Her lawyer, Emily Joselson of Middlebury, said federaldisability rules 
and laws require that examiners "provide theaccommodations that best 
ensure that the test taker's results on the exam willreflect the 
substantive knowledge that's being tested and not their disabilities."

U.S. District Court Judge Christina Reiss said in a 26-pagedecision that 
"reasonable accommodations" for Jones were not enoughand without the 
laptop and software Jones had requested "the MPRE willprimarily test her 
ability to work through her disabilities and that she willnot be able to 
compete on an equal basis with non-disabled test takers."

NCBE, based in Madison, Wis., did not return a phone callseeking 
comment. Court papers show the nonprofit corporation is seeking 
towithhold Jones' score.

Reiss questioned NCBE's priorities.

"The public interest compels the court to orderaccommodations that will 
best ensure a disabled person's access to aprofessional exam that will, 
in part, determine whether he or she may practicea chosen profession," 
she wrote.

"The public's interest in the integrity of secure,professional licensing 
exams while important and legitimate does not trump theADA," Reiss wrote.

Jones' disabilities have long been tested. Legally blindsince she was 5 
and not diagnosed with a learning disability until she was inher 30s, 
Jones described her public school years in Hightstown, N.J., as a"rough 
ride."

What got her through? "My mom," she said.

I'd come home from a school a mess, you know, just crying atthe table," 
she said.

Her mother, Elaine Jones, would get her organized and helpher through 
the work.

But Jones dropped out of college after high school with aGPA of .92 
after one year.

She went on to start a record store and later to run the foodservice at 
the Statehouse in Montpelier.

In her 30s, everything changed. She learned that in additionto macular 
degeneration in each eye --- depriving her of centralized visionand 
preventing her from seeing anything other than peripheral objects ---she 
also had atypical retinitis pigmentosa, eyesight-threatening damage to 
herretina that causes loss of peripheral vision.

"What's important about that is that meant I wasn'tjust going to lose my 
central vision, I was going to lose all of myvision," she said at her 
Middlesex home.

She also discovered that she had a learning disability.

In early 2000, Jones learned about the computer softwareprograms that 
allowed her to read and return to college: The ZoomTextMagnifier/Reader, 
which magnifies text, and Kurzweil 3000 screen reader, whichreads the 
text aloud and highlights sentences and words that she can followwith a 
cursor.

Until then the only book she'd gotten through was alarge-print edition 
of "The Diary of Anne Frank," which she used forevery book report she wrote.

"So when I got to Vermont College with this particularsoftware and I 
could scan any book in the world and read it. It was justunbelievable.

"It was the first time in my life I was able to readbooks and it just 
opened up the whole world," she said, with tears wellingin her eyes. "It 
was so amazing."

She read literature classics --- "Moby Dick,"''The Great Gatsby," and 
"Anna Karenina" as well as psychologyand books in myriad subjects, 
enough for her to get a liberal arts degree.

"I couldn't read until I was in my 30s. It's a bigdeal," she said.

While she was an undergraduate, she studied the Americanswith 
Disabilities Act, rekindling her childhood dream of going to law 
school,she said.

She's not sure exactly what she'll do as a lawyer. Shethinks about 
working with colleges and professional schools, giving 
sensitivitytraining about people with disabilities and how to 
accommodate them.

For now, she expects another fight next year when she takesthe Vermont 
bar exam --- which also comes without technology. She hasn'tyet inquired 
about special accommodations to take that test.

So far, she's got the grades to prove her success.

"I have a 3.28 GPA. And if I get a 3.5 by next semesteror even in the 
following semester, I can graduate cum laude. And I am dying tograduate 
cum laude," she said.

Read more: 
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/08/07/legally-blind-vt-law-student-wins-1... 
<http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/08/07/legally-blind-vt-law-student-wins-1st-big-case/#ixzz1URD5pUrN>

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