Mobile Device Tools for Courts

 

Many courts and judicial systems have configured their websites for mobile/cell phone screen size.  But many other courts have not.  Considering that over 90% of mobile/cell phone users have Internet access from their device, maybe the focus of your online information delivery approach might shift?  We discuss two tools that might help?

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In CTB posts we try to provide ideas or tools to solve the problem or issue.  To that end, I discovered the best website I have seen for testing your court website for mobile compatibility.  It is called mobiReady ( https://ready.mobi/about ).  All you have to do is enter your court’s web URL address in their website field and it shows you what it looks like on a computer and three different mobile phone browsers. 

MobiReady also gives you a score on “how well a particular webpage will do” on various mobile devices.  It also provides a page weight score on how efficient your page loads on the Chrome browser.  Mobile devices often have limited bandwidth and the more efficient the better.

Best of all mobiReady, gives one specific advice on specific issues and actions that you might take to improve the web page such as JavaScript and Stylesheet placement and “ETag” support.  When there is a “major fail” found they provide a link on “how to fix it”.

docassemble

Another mobile device first tool available is the open-source, “docassemble”.  Their website says:

“ docassemble is a free, open-source expert system for guided interviews and document assembly. It provides a web site that conducts interviews with users. Based on the information gathered, the interviews can present users with documents in PDF, RTF, or DOCX format, which users can download or e-mail.

Though the name emphasizes the document assembly feature, docassemble interviews do not need to assemble a document; they might submit an application, direct the user to other resources on the internet, store user input, interact with APIs, or simply provide the user with information.

docassemble was created by a lawyer/computer programmer for purposes of automating the practice of law, but it is a general-purpose platform that can find applications in a variety of fields.”

It is a cool system for putting together access to justice and court forms.