Since courts were on leave during this period, I have combined updates for both weeks in this message. On 23rd December, HARSHDEEP SINGH’s LPA was listed in the Delhi High Court with respect to his disqualification from sitting for the fifth semester exams as he failed to clear the minimum of five out of his 20 exams in the four semesters of his Law) course so far. He is a candidate with cerebral palsy and therefore has poor handwriting and it was our case that because of the same he was not fairly assessed. While the court refuse to allow him to sit for the fifth semester exams, it modified the earlier order which had only granted revaluation of three papers to say that the revaluation must be for all eight papers in which he had failed.
On 24th December, our petition against Uber and the Ministry of Road transport and highways was listed in the Delhi High Court. The case relates to incidence in which Uber failed to accommodate a passenger with visual impairment and agreed to do so only after great persuasion. And argues that there is a systematic issue at play here where Cab aggregators and Uber in particular do not account for the needs of passengers with disabilities in different facets of their functioning. The court issued notice in the matter and notified it for 27th March.
On 30th December and third January, a petition that we were arguing on behalf of a net JRF candidate was listed in the Delhi High Court. She is a blind person who wishes to give her exams with a screen reader rather than a scribe. it was our case that this issue has been covered by the Supreme Court’ judgement in the AIBE matter and the government guidelines allow for the use of a screen reader and require the examining body to make available the same. on 30th December, the Delhi High Court had directed us to withdraw the complaint from the Ccpd office if we wanted to pursue the writ petition given that the Ccpd complaint was also pending. We took steps to do the same and obtained a withdrawal order on second January. on the third, the matter was argued on the merits at length. There were two rounds of hearings. In the first round, the court seem to be very much in our favour and was in fact on the verge of issuing directions to the NTA to direct them to make available the necessary facilities for the petitioner to be able to give the exam with a screen reader.However, the tide entirely turned in the second round.
In the first round, at the outset, the court was of the view that we had come extremely late and were seeking this relief just four days before the exam. We pointed out that we had written representations to the NTA on this issue in June and July and obtained an order from the Ccpd in November directing them to make available the option of screen reader use for computer examination in November. And only once the NTA had failed to reply to that also, did we approach the High Court. The court also asked us to respond to the technical responses which the NTA had given. They said that the screen reader cannot be integrated with the software that they use for giving the exam. That it will disrupt the local area network. That it could disrupt the exam entirely which is being given by eight lakh people. that it might slowdown the network. And things like that. We responded on each of these points individually. We said that the exam can be conducted by simply installing a screen reader on the computer with a pen drive and attaching our keyboard to their computer. We said that there was no local area network issue that would arise from this as it is a third-party software which is not run on the internet or anything like that. and that there would be no issue in terms of security that this would cause. The court asked in detail how a screen reader works and we explain to them. On this, they were very convinced and told the NTA that you were first approached in June. Why did you not do anything about this. when the NTA said that there would be compatibility issues, the court said that you have to tell us what the issue is specifically and just not make a loose assertion like that. And said that they were bound by two Supreme Court orders. They asked both sides to come back. The NTA after figuring out how this could technically be done. And me after checking from the client if she still wanted to give the exam with a screen reader and run that risk given that this was going to be in short order and therefore issues may arise and may adversely impact her. When I checked with the client, her instructions were unequivocal. She wanted to give the exam with a screen reader, come what may. She was willing to take the risk. And was of the view that at the highest if something goes wrong, she may miss one attempt but would figure out what kind of issues she was facing so that those can be tackled in future attempts.
When the matter was taken up in the second round, the court’s view was quite negative. When we told them that we wanted to use a screen reader, they asked why we are so vehement about it rather than Scribe. We explained about autonomy and choice, the difficulty in finding a good Scribe and the fact that the petitioner is accustomed to giving her exams with a screen reader at the masters level. The court said that it is an important issue but perhaps for this exam it may not be workable. they said that why did you choose for the NTA to give their Scribe rather than to bring your own Scribe if you are so bothered about autonomy. We said that the only option in the exam form was for Scribe and not for a screen reader. And we would have difficulty in getting our own Scribe hence we chose this option. The court brushed aside this argument. The NTA then was asked to bring its expert who said that the reason why they cannot use a screen reader for this exam is because the exam will be run on the Linux system whereas jaws and NVDA only work on Windows systems. I said that this is their self-serving statement and they should be asked to put an affidavit with supporting evidence to make good this assertion. And why is it that they have not thought about it till now. And that they should have never outsourced the exam to a 3rd party without first checking about Accessibility. however, the court did not seem very convinced. They said that wanting a screen reader at this stage depicts the petitioner’s in experience and that this is not a case which can be heard during the vacation. At any rate, they reserved orders with respect to the interim application for the seventh jan exam. And kept the main writ petition pending which seeks the structural relief of ensuring that NTA integrates all of these measures to make available screen readers at the very outset in its exams going forward. We figured that we have nothing to lose even if we are not allowed to use a screen reader for this exam. At the highest, the status quo of using a Scribe will remain. Hence we did not withdraw the Application and made our arguments.