[vip_students] Legally blind Vt. law student wins 1st big case
- From: "Scanlon, Tony" <tony.scanlon@xxxxxx>
- To: vip_students@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 08 Aug 2011 14:18:17 +0100
Hope this item may be of interest to all you budding law students, but wonder
what the story here is as regards exam taking and using technology?
Tony
By LISA RATHKE Associated Press
Posted: 08/07/2011 09:57:05 AM PDT
MIDDLESEX, Vt.-Deanna Jones, a third-year law student who'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 let her take a key
legal ethics exam using a computer with screen access software that she has
used to read in college and in law school.
Armed with a federal judge's order, she was able to take the test Friday,
closely watched by a proctor, test supervisor and someone from the ACT, Inc.
testing company, she said.
"I think I did OK," she said. "I left feeling like I probably passed it."
Jones, who attends Vermont Law School with hopes of practicing disability law,
needs the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam 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 taken electronically. The
organization had offered instead to have someone read the test to Jones, to let
her take the test in Braille, in enlarged print, and use an audio CD.
But a judge ruled Tuesday that the examiners had to provide her a laptop
equipped with the special software. Jones said she was "just emotionally
overcome" when she finally sat down for the exam.
"I just sort of broke into a fit of bawling for a moment," 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 in that chair," she
said.
Dan Goldstein, a Baltimore-based lawyer for Jones and the National Federation
of the Blind, said he's been involved with four other similar cases, three of
which have been successful, resulting in preliminary injunctive relief. The
federation paid Jones' legal bills.
Her lawyer, Emily Joselson of Middlebury, said federal disability rules and
laws require that examiners "provide the accommodations that best ensure that
the test taker's results on the exam will reflect the substantive knowledge
that's being tested and not their disabilities."
U.S. District Court Judge Christina Reiss said in a 26-page decision that
"reasonable accommodations" for Jones were not enough and without the laptop
and software Jones had requested "the MPRE will primarily test her ability to
work through her disabilities and that she will not be able to compete on an
equal basis with non-disabled test takers."
NCBE, based in Madison, Wis., did not return a phone call seeking comment.
Court papers show the nonprofit corporation is seeking to withhold Jones'
score.
Reiss questioned NCBE's priorities.
"The public interest compels the court to order accommodations that will best
ensure a disabled person's access to a professional exam that will, in part,
determine whether he or she may practice a chosen profession," she wrote.
"The public's interest in the integrity of secure, professional licensing exams
while important and legitimate does not trump the ADA," Reiss wrote.
Jones' disabilities have long been tested. Legally blind since she was 5 and
not diagnosed with a learning disability until she was in her 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 at the table," she
said.
Her mother, Elaine Jones, would get her organized and help her through the
work.
But Jones dropped out of college after high school with a GPA of .92 after one
year.
She went on to start a record store and later to run the food service at the
Statehouse in Montpelier.
In her 30s, everything changed. She learned that in addition to macular
degeneration in each eye-depriving her of centralized vision and preventing her
from seeing anything other than peripheral objects-she also had atypical
retinitis pigmentosa, eyesight-threatening damage to her retina that causes
loss of peripheral vision.
"What's important about that is that meant I wasn't just going to lose my
central vision, I was going to lose all of my vision," she said at her
Middlesex home.
She also discovered that she had a learning disability.
In early 2000, Jones learned about the computer software programs that allowed
her to read and return to college: The ZoomText Magnifier/Reader, which
magnifies text, and Kurzweil 3000 screen reader, which reads the text aloud and
highlights sentences and words that she can follow with a cursor.
Until then the only book she'd gotten through was a large-print edition of "The
Diary of Anne Frank," which she used for every book report she wrote.
"So when I got to Vermont College with this particular software and I could
scan any book in the world and read it. It was just unbelievable.
"It was the first time in my life I was able to read books and it just opened
up the whole world," she said, with tears welling in her eyes. "It was so
amazing."
She read literature classics-"Moby Dick," "The Great Gatsby," and "Anna
Karenina" as well as psychology and 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 big deal," she said.
While she was an undergraduate, she studied the Americans with 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. She thinks about working
with colleges and professional schools, giving sensitivity training about
people with disabilities and how to accommodate them.
For now, she expects another fight next year when she takes the Vermont bar
exam-which also comes without technology. She hasn't yet 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 semester or even in the
following semester, I can graduate cum laude. And I am dying to graduate cum
laude," she said.
Return to Top
__________________________________
This e-mail and any attached files are from FAS and are confidential. This
E-mail is intended only for the addressee indicated in the message. If you are
not the intended recipient you must not disclose, copy, distribute or use the
information but please delete the email as soon as possible. Any views or
opinions expressed in the email are those of the sender only and not
necessarily those of FAS. FAS - Training and Employment Authority P.O. Box 456,
27-33 Upper Baggot Street, Dublin 4, Ireland. Tel: 353-1-6070500, Fax:
353-1-6070600, Email: info@xxxxxxx
Tagann an r-phost seo agus aon chomhad ceangailte leis ó FÁS agus tá siad
rúnda. Tá an r-phost dírithe ar an seolaí luaite sa teachtaireacht amháin.
Murar tusa an seolaí úd ní cheadaítear duit aon chaint, cóipeáil, dáileadh ná
úsáid a dhéanamh as an méid a bhí sa teachtaireacht ach é a scrios láithreach
le do thoil. D'fhéadfadh tuairimí pearsanta an údair a bheith á nochtadh ann
agus ní gá gur mar a chéile iad agus tuairimí FÁS. FÁS ? Foras Áiseanna
Saothair Bosca O.P. 456, 27-33 Sráid Bhagóid Uachtarach, Baile Átha Cliath 4,
Éire. Teil: 353-1-6070500, Facs: 353-1-6070600, Rphost: info@xxxxxxx
__________________________________
Other related posts:
- » [vip_students] Legally blind Vt. law student wins 1st big case - Scanlon, Tony
