Law student, Robb Shecter, who has created the OregonLaws.Org web site, wrote us recently about the fact that California Codes have accessibility issues:
The California Codes are published online (http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/calaw.html) with crucial information absent (removed?) that renders them nearly impossible to use:
No Section names (“leadlines”) are present in this version-for-the-public. For example, the Sections relevant to the California Highway Patrol are presented like this:
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=veh&group=02001-03000&file=2250-2269
The sections are thus relatively unusable, greatly increasing the cost of legal research and defeating access and transparency for nearly all people. The missing information is also crucial for third parties (like me) who’d like to create easy-to-use directories of the codes.
The needed information does seem to exist, however. The names for this particular section, for example, can be found on the DMV website, for example:
http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/vc/tocd2c2a2.htm
Those DMV pages are unfortunately the exception that proves the rule. After seeing these Section names, it should be immediately obvious that these represent a crucial element of the codes that should be published along with the codes.
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