Minnesota as part of ABC's attempt to promote their mid-season schedule. The other shows premiering were Grey's Anatomy, Eyes, Supernanny, and Jake in Progress. Kramer Morgenthau was the cinematographer for the pilot and together with director Gary Fleder established the basic visual presentation of Blind Justice. For the series Bochco employed two cinematographers, Jeff Jur and Ric Bota, who worked on alternate episodes to allow for more time to visually develop the individual episodes. Blind Justice was the first scripted series to be broadcast on ABC with video description for the visually impaired, where available (FCC regulations for Descriptive Video Service would not come into force for seven more years). Reception Kevin D. Thompson of Cox News Service said Blind Justice is "worth your attention mostly because of Ron Eldard's standout performance as Dunbar", a character whom he described as "one of TV's most intriguing new characters." Vikki Ortiz of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel watched the premiere with members of the Badger Association of the Blind and Visually Impaired in Milwaukee and found that generally they considered it a realistic portrayal of what it is like to be blind, citing use of proper commands being given to his guide dog and having Detective Bettancourt lead him with her arm. Ortiz mentioned that several people did say that it was unrealistic that he would be allowed to carry a gun. In her review of the pilot Alessandra Stanley of The New York Times found that Blind Justice "is at its best when portraying how people react to the character Jim Dunbar". Stanley goes on to say in her review that "the scenes at the precinct when he first returns to work are intelligently and delicately written. His heroism, and the groundbreaking lawsuit he filed, turned him into a celebrity cop, and his colleagues on the force greet him with graceless courtesy and palpable resentment. Dunbar is blind, but in a previous generation, he could have been black or female and encountered a similar kind of churlishness." Robert Bianco of USA Today was less receptive to Blind Justice. Bianco wrote a column solely on concepts worse than Blind Justice, of which he said, "As bad ideas go, Blind Justice's gun-toting blind guy isn't even a patch on some of the truly awful concepts that have made it to series." Matthew Gilbert of The Boston Globe said Detective Dunbar "might as well be