When thousands of students across the country were busy taking the bar exam last July, one UCLA law graduate was notably absent.
Stephanie Enyart is partially blind. She relies on computer software that includes both pictures and sounds to comprehend material. Her request to use that software on the multistate portion of the test was denied.
This, Enyart said, would give her a disadvantage when taking the test because she was not used to the format.
In response, Enyart filed a lawsuit against the National Conference of Bar Examiners, the entity responsible for administering that section of the test.
The NCBE could not be reached for comment.
When Enyart asked for accommodations to take the bar exam, she was offered a human reader and a closed circuit television. The reader, she said, would synchronize their voice to what was being displayed on the television.
“To put another person into the mix, it is a really big thing for me,” Enyart said. “It brings up this whole other universe of other things to pay attention to.”
Enyart started losing her eyesight at 15 years old. Now 32, Enyart said she wants to practice disability law, promoting wide systemic changes in the rights of the disability community.
“I want to be able to improve the lives of people with disabilities,” Enyart said. “There’s a lot of need, and that absolutely kills me.”
Jyoti Nanda, a UCLA Public Interest Law and Policy professor, was one of Enyart’s teachers while she was at UCLA. She said that Enyart’s work was strongly needed.
“The legal community hasn’t kept up with the needs of the disabled community,” Nanda said. “I don’t think there is a full appreciation or understanding; I feel like we still don’t fully get some of the challenges our own lawyers face.”
Nanda said that Enyart worked hard for disability rights while she was a student, and Nanda saw this lawsuit as a continuation of that advocacy.
When Enyart graduated from Stanford University in 1999, she said her goal was to be a professor. She said she planned on teaching literature courses dealing with the disability experience.
In her early 20s, Enyart found out that her condition was progressive. Enyart has macular degeneration, a condition that erodes central vision, usually at a slow pace. After graduating from college, she lost a significantly larger amount of eyesight.
As a result, she learned Braille and became more involved with the blind community. It was at this point, according to Enyart, that she decided to be a disability rights lawyer.
She said there were so many issues that needed to be tackled before she would be able to go into a classroom and teach. A first priority, she said, was to deal with accessibility for the disabled.
“I thought it happened for a reason, that this was the work that I’m supposed to do, at least for now,” Enyart said.
Karla Gilbride, a fellowship attorney at Disability Rights Advocates, is one of the lawyers representing Enyart in the case. Gilbride said that the accommodations that Enyart is requesting are not out of the ordinary.
“We hope the NCBE will move into the 21st century and embrace this technology that is very widespread and is a very big part of people’s everyday lives,” Gilbride said.
Enyart said she felt testing with the use of the software she has relied upon during all her life as a student and a professional was the most logical approach.
“(An employer would want) to test me in the way that I’ve studied,” Enyart said. “I don’t think you’d want to test me in some kind of alternate universe that I’ve never been in, and never going to be in again.”
However, the California State Bar, which administers the state-specific portion of the exam, said it was all right for Enyart to use the technology, according to Gilbride.
The goal is to get the court to order a temporary injunction allowing Enyart to take the test with the software in early 2010. Gilbride said she hopes the hearing for the injunction will fall within the next month.
The lawsuit targets the NCBE, alleging that they have discriminated against blind and low-vision law school graduates, a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The lawsuit includes no provision for monetary damages.