Interesting LSAT-related lawsuit

[LSAT Eliminator]

Headline: "Law Schools Discriminate Against Blind Applicants"
http://www.sys-con.com/node/1426453

From the article: "The suit was filed because the law schools require or encourage applicants to use a centralized Internet-based application process provided by the Law School Admissions Council (LSAC) through its Web site (www.lsac.org) that is inaccessible to blind law school applicants. Blind students must seek sighted assistance to use the LSAC system. Furthermore, blind law school applicants cannot perform other tasks on the LSAC Web site, such as downloading official study materials for the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) that is required by almost all U.S. law schools."

[EarlCat]

Doesn't the entire internet discriminate against blind people?

[LSAT Eliminator]

I'm trying to figure how it is the LSAC website specifically that discriminates. I know there are website readers that can verbalize certain elements of a site, but why is LSAT.com discriminatory and mba,com or whatever is not?

That said, LSAC has had a lot of issues with accommodation-related issues, as you know.

[Jeffort]

I'm trying to figure how it is the LSAC website specifically that discriminates. I know there are website readers that can verbalize certain elements of a site, but why is LSAT.com discriminatory and mba,com or whatever is not?

That said, LSAC has had a lot of issues with accommodation-related issues, as you know.

Why is LSAC and not an MBA or other website being sued?  Because here we have a blind plaintiff that has been seeking LS admission who, as alleged, has faced unlawful barriers to admission due to her disability and therefore has suffered harm as a result of the alleged violations of law by LSAC and plaintiff believes there is an available legal remedy, hence she sued them.  In short, Deepa alleges she has been a victim of discriminatory conduct, has been damaged by it and therefore has standing to sue and seek relief for the wrong in a court of law.  

The MBA admission sites may very well be in violation of the ADA but neither you nor I nor Deepa can sue them for that since it doesn't harm us because we are not seeking MBA admission, in short, no harm no foul, we have nothing to complain about on our own behalf and to ask a court to do something about.

Contrary to what many would initially think, much of the web is not inaccessible to visually impaired people.  There are some pretty good tech tools available that can take a web page that is formatted properly according to particular established standards for this purpose to allow a blind person to navigate the site and have the text read aloud or have the content outputted on an electronic/mechanical braille touch pad so that the text is readable on a braille touch pad.  The main claim is that the LSAC web pages are not/were not formatted properly for the blind student technology tools to be able to work with it and output the content to the student either verbally or in braille.  

The other main claim is that LSAC could, but does not make a substantial number of previously administered LSAT tests (PrepTests) available for study/practice/prep in a form usable by blind students while at the same time there are roughly 60 PrepTests available to non-blind students for study/practice/preparation, thereby putting a blind test taker at a huge disadvantage when trying to prep and improve their score.  As far as I know, as of early last year LSAC only made 4 full LSAT tests available in braille form for blind students to get and use for prep/study/practice which left Deepa without much to work with as she tried to prep for the LSAT last year.  I learned a lot about this stuff, tools for the visually impaired and about braille leading up to when this law suit was filed early last year because I was assigned by my then employer the project of getting numerous more LSAT tests converted into and produced in proper braille form specifically for Deepa, the plaintiff, to use to prep for the test.  Converting an LSAT into proper braille form that conforms with the recognized braille conventions is complicated, time consuming, and very expensive to do.  I'll just say that the cost to convert and produce a single preptest into braille form was WAY WAY WAAAAAY more than $8 a test.  

Aside from all that, it baffles me how a visually impaired person effectively goes about doing the LG section since diagramming/making a setup on the page is out of the question.  

[LawSchoolGuy]

I'm trying to figure how it is the LSAC website specifically that discriminates. I know there are website readers that can verbalize certain elements of a site, but why is LSAT.com discriminatory and mba,com or whatever is not?

I'm tempted to say that mba.com et al are probably just as discriminatory--but no one's filed suit on them yet.

[LSAT Eliminator]

No doubt. My point was more to the fact that you would expect one of the GMAT/GRE/ACT/SAT etc types of testing sites to have endured this already, especially since more people take those tests. LSAC constantly seems to be in some sort of legal wrangle regarding accommodations.

Regardless, a number of your other points are valid, especially the one about not enough Braille tests and how do visually impaired students effectively complete the LG sections. I'd like to see more from LSAC on those fronts.

[widespreadLSATpanic]

No doubt. My point was more to the fact that you would expect one of the GMAT/GRE/ACT/SAT etc types of testing sites to have endured this already, especially since more people take those tests. LSAC constantly seems to be in some sort of legal wrangle regarding accommodations.

Probably because of all the wanna-be lawyers they deal with.

[LawSchoolGuy]

No doubt. My point was more to the fact that you would expect one of the GMAT/GRE/ACT/SAT etc types of testing sites to have endured this already, especially since more people take those tests. LSAC constantly seems to be in some sort of legal wrangle regarding accommodations.

Probably because of all the wanna-be lawyers they deal with.

Took the words right outta my mouth.

[LSAT Eliminator]

Probably because of all the wanna-be lawyers they deal with.

True, but still--I wonder if the other tests have dealt with these types of situations in the past. Maybe I'll doing some searching and see

[Jeffort]

Probably because of all the wanna-be lawyers they deal with.

True, but still--I wonder if the other tests have dealt with these types of situations in the past. Maybe I'll doing some searching and see

Yeah, that would be interesting to know.  I don't know how true it is, but i've heard over the years that getting granted special accommodations of various types for the SAT is really easy (and even easy to get with thin justification that can easily be 'bought', meaning that people that don't really need them have been able to get them by getting a random doctor to write a note saying you are ADD/ADHD or something), unlike for the LSAT where LSAC requires a ton of supporting medical documentation. 

[LawSchoolGuy]

If you ask me, I think LSAC's got it right: You SHOULD have to provide tons of supporting documentation in order to receive special treatment. A single doctor's note shouldn't be all you've got stating that you need accommodations. If you really DO have a disability of some sort, providing various forms of support shouldn't be that difficult. It's when you're trying to create a reason (where there might not otherwise be one) that it could get hard to provide multiple sources of proof. and LSAC's methods weed out the wannabe system gamers.

[Anne]

An interesting development (hat tip: National Jurist Magazine, http://www.nationaljurist.com/content/advocacy-group-adds-four-law-schools-suit-alleging-discrimination-against-blind-applicants):

The National Federation for the Blind has added four California law schools to a suit filed last year against the Law School Admissions Council (LSAC). The suit claims that LSAC’s online application system violates the Americans With Disabilities Act and other state disability laws because it is not accessible to the blind.


LSAC’s online application system compiles information including academic transcripts and LSAT scores in order to make it easier to submit applications to multiple law schools. The system is not compatible with software that vocalizes visual information or displays it in Braille for blind users, preventing blind applicants from using the system independently. The suit claims that LSAC’s online application system discriminates against blind applicants for this reason.

The amended suit seeks damages from the LSAC, as well as an injunction providing that the online application be made accessible to the blind. The four law schools named in the suit — Chapman University School of Law, Whittier Law School, Thomas Jefferson School of Law and the University of California Hastings College of Law — are said to be violating the law by using LSAC’s application system.

“These schools have an obligation to be accessible in the services they offer,” said Daniel Golstein, one of the attorneys representing the federation, in a statement to The National Law Journal.

Still, representatives from the mentioned law schools are unsure as to why they are being singled out.

“Almost all law schools use the Law School Admissions Council application process, and Chapman University has no idea why it has been singled out to be joined to the dispute between these two parties,” reads a statement release by Chapman University.

In addition to their suit against the LSAC, the advocacy group has also been pushing the National Conference of Bar Examiners to make the multi-state bar exam accessible to the blind.

There's also another similar suit going on, which I mentioned here: http://www.lsatdiscussion.com/index.php/topic,897.0.html

It's definitely surprising to me that this is happening. You would think that with all the awareness surrounding disabilities and equal opportunity, this wouldn't be a problem anymore.