Blind Student Wins Computer Aid For Bar Exam

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U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer of San Francisco ordered the National Conference of Bar Examiners on Friday to accommodate Stephanie Enyart, who was born sighted but suffers from macular degeneration and retinal dystrophy and was declared legally blind at 15.

Enyart, 32, graduated last spring from UCLA Law School, where she took tests on a laptop with software that magnified the text and read the words into earbuds. But she has not taken the bar exam because the national examiners, who administer the two multiple-choice portions of the California test, have refused to allow the same arrangements.

Federal disability law “does not require testing organizations to provide disabled examinees with their preferred accommodations,” the examiners’ lawyer, Gregory Tenhoff, said in court papers. He also said putting the test questions on a computer disk would expose them to hackers and thieves.

The examiners said Enyart would have to accept the usual accommodations for blind and visually impaired applicants: a pencil-and-paper test with questions displayed on an enlarged screen, a human reader and twice the usual three-day testing period.

Enyart, now a law clerk at Disability Rights Advocates in Berkeley, said in her suit that she needed the computer setup to have a fair chance of passing the exam. Breyer agreed Friday and said the bar could provide its own computer for increased security.

“A disability should not prevent an individual from pursuing their dream, if that’s what it is, of practicing law,” the judge said.

The exam begins Feb. 23. The examiners could ask a federal appeals court to block Breyer’s order. Their office declined comment after the hearing.

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