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The ABA Journal is read by half of the nation's 1 million lawyers every month. It covers the trends, people and finances of the legal profession from Wall Street to Main Street to Pennsylvania Avenue.

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For law firms on the web, online accessibility for the disabled is good business My ABA Events CLE Marketplace Shop ABA Member Directory Join Log In News Latest News Topics Features Latest Issue Podcasts Asked and Answered Legal Rebels Modern Law Library Columnists Advocacy Bryan Garner on Words Intersection On Well-Being Mind Your Business My Path to Law Storytelling Supreme Court Report Your Voice Adam Banner Ari Kaplan Erwin Chemerinsky Marcel Strigberger Nicole Black Susan Smith Blakely Members Who Inspire Home Law Scribbler For law firms on the web, online accessibility… Law Scribbler For law firms on the web, online accessibility for the disabled is good business By Jason Tashea May 21, 2019, 6:30 am CDT   Tweet     Email Print Jason Tashea. Photo by Saverio Truglia. When it comes to making the law more accessible online, few can claim a longer history than Cornell University Law School's Legal Information Institute. Since its founding in 1992, the LII has undertaken many notable projects, including republishing the Code of Federal Regulations, running a legal encyclopedia for quick definitions and understanding of legal topics, and conducting research into the readability of the law. Now, the organization is taking a step back and looking at its online infrastructure to make sure its content can be accessed by all people, including those with disabilities. They intend to have the project completed by the end of the year. “It’s ambitious,” says Sara Frug, associate director for technology at the LII. To accomplish this, Frug and her team will implement the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 AA, considered the “gold standard” in Europe and the U.S. for online accessibility. Meeting these standards will help the blind, who use screen readers, understand text and images on a screen, and assist those that can’t use a mouse by making the site navigable by keyboard, for example. Only a month into the project, it “has raised our own awareness about the ways in which there are a lot of impediments,” says Frug, who hopes their experience will help others think of web accessibility as a best practice that improves innovative, online resources. Bringing attention to the issue is desperately needed in the legal profession, where online accessibility is far from the norm. As legal services providers update their technology and grow their online footprints, they should build and use technology that is accessible to the broadest number of people. Doing so will increase office productivity, client and employee retention and save firms money by not engaging in piecemeal accommodation. The importance of online accessibility is heightened for law firms due to increased online interaction between lawyers and clients, says Robert Gonzales, chair of the ABA’s Commission on Disability Rights. Even so, the issue has not been on the front burner in the legal industry, in part because of its lack of diversity. While the profession needs to capture better data on disabilities and firms’ compliance with relevant laws, the best numbers say that one-half of 1% of partners and associates have disabilities, according to the National Association of Law Placement’s 2018 Report on Diversity in U.S. Law Firms. This number may be low, as the report indicates that about 2% of law school graduates have a disability. Nationally, 1 in 5 people have a disability. In this ecosystem, legal technology companies are—self-admittedly—missing the mark. In 2016, the ABA Commission on Disability Rights surveyed the 120 vendors at ABA Techshow. Of the 79 respondents, only eight indicated their software was accessible to those with disabilities. Law firms are not that much better, according to Gonzales. Even when firms do take a step toward accessibility, it’s usually reacting to an individual request, he says. Another reason for slow adoption of web accessibility standards is that the law is unclear. Legally, there’s a federal circuit court split over whether the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, which is used to decrease physical barriers that impede the disabled, applies to internet technologies. At issue is whether a website is a “public accommodation,” like a store or hotel. Image from Shutterstock.com. The 1st, 2nd and 7th Circuit Courts of Appeals say that a website can be a place of public accommodation regardless of any connection to a physical space, according to a recent article by Jason Brown, an associate at Hunton Andrews Kurth in Washington, D.C. By comparison, the 3rd, 6th, 9th, and 11th Circuit Courts of Appeals have held that a website is not a public accommodation, unless it has a sufficient connection to a physical public accommodation. Without U.S. Department of Justice guidance on

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