Stephanie Enyart is a 2009 graduate of UCLA School of Law. We introduced Ms. JD readers to Stephanie last year, after the ABA Student Division's magazine featured a story about her experience as a legally blind law school student and her role in founding the National Association of Law Students with Disabilities. In law school, Stephanie used software programs that scanned written material and read it aloud while reproducing the text in a magnified visual format. She uses the same blend of software in her current position as a clerk with the Disability Rights Advocates, a nonprofit organization in Berkeley, California. 

Like most recent graduates, Stephanie is ready to take the bar exam. While the California Bar Examiners agreed to accommodate Stephanie with the software she has used in the past, the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE), which controls the type of accommodations that states may offer during the multistate portion of the exam, has refused to provide her with that software. The NCBE has offered her the option of using a screen reader, the accommodation provided to all blind test takers, but will not offer the software with the screen magnification that Stephanie is accustomed to using.

A lawsuit was filed on her behalf in the Northern District of California last week. It claims that the refusal to provide the software violates Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and California’s civil rights law by denying accommodations to a blind law student. It seeks a preliminary injunction ordering the test administrators to offer the screen reading/magnification software for the next two California bar examinations. As Stephanie explained in an article published on Wednesday:

“The accommodations that I'm seeking are the accommodations that I've used for all of my legal education, in multiple legal internships and in my current legal work," she said. "I'm just seeking the opportunity to be measured on my ability to work with legal material in the way that I'm going to practice. I think that's what future employers and clients would want.” 

For more information about the lawsuit, visit the Disability Rights Advocates website.