Andrews v. Blick Art Materials, LLC

Filing 30

AMENDED MEMORANDUM ON THE COURT'S PREPARATION IN ANTICIPATION OF THE SCIENCE DAY HEARING. Ordered by Judge Jack B. Weinstein on 8/28/2017. (Barrett, C)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
VICTOR ANDREWS, on behalf of himself
and all others similarly situated,
Plaintiff,

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

- against -

17-CV-767
IN cLEni('S OFC
U.S. DISTRiCT COURT 5DM.?.

*

BLICK ART MATERIALS, LLC,

*

Defendant.

13ROOKLyN OFFICE

AU6282017

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. Its purpose is to assist the court in learning about technology and other factors
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 to "see" for
purchases and related matters. See Andrews v. Buck Art 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
itself from 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. Sue O'Modhrain, Evaluation of Haptic HTML Mappings
Derived from a Novel Methodology, ACM TRANSACTIONS ON ACCESSIBLE COMPUTING,
Vol. 3, No. 4, Art. No. 12 (Apr. 2011)
2. Stephanie Giraud, Pierre Thérousanne, and Dirk D. Steiner, Conceptualization of a
technical solution for web navigation of visually impaired people, IHM '15 Proceedings
of the 27th Conference on l'Interaction Homme-Machine, Art. No. 24 (Oct. 27, 2015)
3. Andrii Soviak, Haptic Gloves for 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 of Movable Objects for
the Blind on the Basis of Environmental Models and Perception-Oriented Object
Recognition Methods, ASSETS '06 Proceedings of the 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 Interface for the Web on Any Computer, W4A '08
Proceedings of the 2008 international cross-disciplinary conference on Web accessibility
(W4A), 132-33 (Apr. 21, 2008)
8. Jeffrey P. Bigham, et al., Viz Wiz: Nearly Real-time Answers to Visual Questions, UIST
'10 Proceedings of the 23nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and
technology, 333-42 (Oct. 3, 2010)
9. Leah Findlater, et al., Supporting Everyday Activities for 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 I.V. Ramakrisbnan, Web Screen Reading
Automation Assistance Using Semantic Abstraction, JUl '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 Easier for the Blind, NordiCHI '08 Proceedings of the 5th Nordic
conference on Human-computer interaction: building bridges, 423-26 (Oct. 20, 2008)
Substantial issues are raised in these materials respecting communication problems, changing
technology, costs, etc.

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. The parties may
demonstrate in court the auxiliary aids and technology which blind individuals and businesses
may need to use to enable website access. Because this is a putative class action which may
have far-reaching effects, the parties may present briefing from amici curiae and testimony from
putative class members before and during the Science Day hearings.

SO ORDERED.

/

1

'Jack B. Weinstein
Senior United States District Judge
Date: August 28, 2017
Brooklyn, New York

3