The department counts more than 500 prisoners with serious vision problems and about 80 with severe hearing problems, though attorneys think both are undercounts.
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The lawsuit is one of several class-action proceedings that have led the courts to assume oversight of the prison system’s treatment of those who are sick or suffer from mental illnesses.“It is difficult not to despair,” a blind prisoner said in written testimony. “I am desperate for some kind of assistance that will let me prepare adequately for my parole hearing.”
“It is a very time-consuming and important process,” said Gay Grunfeld, one of the attorneys representing about 10,000 prisoners with many different disabilities in the federal class-action lawsuit. “All of these tasks are harder if you are blind, low-vision, or deaf.” California’s prison system has lagged in adopting technological accommodations that are commonly used in the outside world, Wilken found inthat can be used for communications and entertainment, and since late 2021 has gradually been providing secure laptops to prisoners who are enrolled in college, GED, and high school diploma programs.
The deaf-since-birth prisoner, for example, testified that he also doesn’t speak, his primary method of communication is American Sign Language, and his English is so poor that written transcripts do him no good. He advocated for recorded sign language translations of the hearings and related documents that he could review whenever he wanted, in the same way that other inmates can review written text.“They need to be able to watch it later, not read it later,” said Grunfeld.
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