Andrews v. Blick Art Materials, LLC

Filing 29

MEMORANDUM On the Court's preparation in anticiption of the Science Day Hearing. SO Ordered by Judge Jack B. Weinstein on 8/24/2017. (Ramesar, Thameera)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK

VICTOR ANDREWS,on behalf of himself
and all others similarly situated,

MEMORANDUM ON THE COURT'S
PREPARATION IN ANTICIPATION OF
THE SCIENCE DAY HEARING

Plaintiff,
17-CV-767

- against-

FILED
IN CLERK'S OFFICE

US DISTRICT COURT E.D.N.Y
BLICK ART MATERIALS,LLC,
Defendant.

* AUG 2 5 2017 5
BROOKLYN OFFICE

Jack B. Weinstein,Senior United States District Judge:

The court has scheduled a "Science Day" hearing to be held on October 18 and 19, 2017.

See ECF No. 25. The purpose of the Science Day is for the court to learn about technology
relevant to the case. In anticipation of this hearing, the court has begun its own research on some
of the technical issues which may be raised with respect to blind people using the Internet for

purchases and related matters. See Andrews v. BlickArt Materials, LLC,2017 WL 3278898
(E.D.N.Y. Aug. 1,2017).

Pursuant to good practice, when a court engages in such independent research, it should
keep the parties fully informed.

"In [non-jury settings], .. . conferences can be used to allow the court to instruct
itselffrom outside sources, and rules such as those limiting access to treatises have
little applicability. What is vital, however, even in a bench trial, is that the parties
be made aware of what information the judge is using and that they be given time
to submit information to meet what they consider to be unreliable data."

See Margaret A. Berger, et al.. Evidence Manual Student Edition § 4.02, at 4-6 (9th ed.
2011.

The knowledge gained through this independent investigation is expected to aid in the
efficient resolution of the case. It will help enable the court to more fully engage with the
experts and materials the parties present.

Thus far, the court has collected the following articles, papers, and abstracts for study:
1. Ravi Kuber, Wai Yu, and M. Sile O'Modhrain, Evaluation ofHaptic HTML Mappings
Derivedfrom a Novel Methodology, ACM TRANSACTIONS ON ACCESSIBLE COMPUTING,
Vol. 3, No. 4, Art. No. 12(Apr. 2011)
2. Stephanie Giraud, Pierre Therousanne, and Dirk D. Steiner, Conceptualization ofa

technical solutionfor web navigation ofvisually impaired people,IHM' Proceedings
15
of the 27th Conference on ITnteraction Homme-Machine, Art. No. 24(Oct. 27, 2015)

3. Andrii Soviak, Haptic Glovesfor Audio-Tactile Web Accessibility, W4A '15 Proceedings
of the 12th Web for All Conference, Art. No.40(May 18, 2015)
4. Kirk Norman, Yevgeniy Arber, and Ravi Kuber, How Accessible is the Process of Web
Interface Design?, ASSETS '13 Proceedings of the 15th International ACM
SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, Art. No. 51 (Oct. 21,2013)
5. Roberto Manduchi and James Coughlan,(Computer) Vision Without Sight, 55
Communications of the ACM 1,96-104(Jan. 2012)
6. Andreas Hub, Tim Hartter, and Thomas Ertl, Interactive Tracking ofMovable Objectsfor
the Blind on the Basis ofEnvironmental Models and Perception-Oriented Object
Recognition Methods, ASSETS '06 Proceedings ofthe 8th international ACM
SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility, 111-18 (Oct. 23, 2006)
7. Jeffrey P. Bigham, Craig M. Prince, Sangyun Hahn, and Richard E. Ladner,
WebAnywhere: A Screen Reading Interfacefor the Web on Any Computer, W4A '08
Proceedings ofthe 2008 international cross-disciplinary conference on Web accessibility
(W4A), 132-33 (Apr. 21, 2008)
8. Jeffrey P. Bigham, et al., VizWiz: Nearly Real-time Answers to Visual Questions, UlST

' Proceedings ofthe 23nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and
10
technology, 333-42(Oct. 3, 2010)

9. Leah Findlater, et al.. Supporting Everyday Activitiesfor Persons with Visual
Impairments Through Computer Vision-Augmented Touch, ASSETS '15 Proceedings of
the 17th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility,
383-84(Oct. 26, 2015)

10. Vikas Ashok, Yury Puzis, Yevgen Borodin, and l.V. Ramakrishnan, Web Screen Reading
Automation Assistance Using Semantic Abstraction, lUl '17 Proceedings of the 22nd
International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, 407-18 (Mar. 7,2017)
11. M. Claudia-Buzzi, Marina Buzzi, Barbara Leporini, and Caterina Senette, Making
Wikipedia Editing Easierfor the Blind, NordiCHl '08 Proceedings ofthe 5th Nordic
conference on Human-computer interaction: building bridges, 423-26(Oct. 20,2008)

At the Science Day hearings, a party may dispute any of the information in these publications
it believes to be unreliable. The court may take judicial notice of the "facts" contained in these
publications for purposes of case administration. Fed. R. Evid. 201
/SO ORDERED.

J JackB. Weinstein
Senior United States District Judge
Date: August 24,2017
Brooklyn, New York

i/