The basis for the complaints is that the law schools require applicants who wish to apply online to use a centralized Internet-based process provided by the Law School Admissions Council via its website – a process that is inaccessible to blind law school applicants.
According to today’s article at PR Newswire, the nine law schools named in the complaints are the University of Chicago Law School, Yeshiva University’s Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School, University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law, Washington and Lee University School of Law, University of Miami School of Law, William Mitchell College of Law, Gonzaga University School of Law, and Northeastern University School of Law.
The complaints ask the Justice Department to require these law schools to suspend use of the LSAC application system until it is accessible to blind and other print-disabled students, and to require each law school to provide the same application process in a format available to all students.
Founded in 1940, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) is the nation’s largest and most influential membership organization of blind persons. With fifty thousand members, the NFB has affiliates in all fifty states plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, and over seven hundred local chapters. As a consumer and advocacy organization, the NFB is considered the leading force in the blindness field today and is the Voice of the Nation’s Blind.