Meet Stephanie Enyart and the National Association of Law Students with Disabilities [Clippings]

This month's issue of Student Lawyer, the ABA Student Division's magazine, profiles Stephanie Enyart in the article "Tackling Law School as a Blind Student." She's a 3L at UCLA and founding president of the National Association of Law Students with Disabilities. One of the group's goals is to develop a set of best practices to provide reasonable accommodations for law students with disabilities. We here at Ms. JD are all about best practices and improving the profession, so I wish them the best. If you have suggestions or interest, please visit nalswd.org.

One of my classmates is blind (hi, T!) and she operates so smoothly around the school that I've surely never given her situation as much thought as I should. We sing in a choir together ("Habeas Chorus" -- insert lame groan here), so I've learned that leaving the classroom door ajar helps her locate us by voice when we haven't scheduled a particular room in advance. That's something that other student orgs which gather informally should probably also learn to do. We've also learned that the considerate thing to do is leave space at the seminar table near the door, so that she doesn't have to navigate around our bodies and bookbags. With these small accommodations, she arrives to take notes on her Braille machine much faster (and dare I say, better) than I could ever type on my laptop.

Every student's story is different, so I appreciated the perspective of Stephanie's story. It's worth reading.