Enhancing Deaf People’s Access to Justice in Northern Ireland: Implementing Article 13 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Article 13 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) specifies that disabled people have the right to ‘effective access to justice’ on an equal basis with others. This includes Deaf people. There is a distinct lack of research which explores the extent to which Article 13 UNCRPD is implemented in practice and which actively involves Deaf people in its implementation and monitoring. This paper shares findings from a rights-based research study co-produced with a Deaf Advisory Group and a Deaf-led organisation. It explores the implementation of Article 13 UNCRPD in Northern Ireland through the experiences of key stakeholders across the justice system including police officers, solicitors, barristers, and judges. The findings of this research study suggest that Deaf people’s access to the justice system is not well supported and that current provisions for Deaf people’s legal needs fall well short of what is required by the UNCRPD

Enhancing Deaf People’s Access to Justice in Northern Ireland: Implementing Article 13 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Article 13 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) specifies that disabled people have the right to ‘effective access to justice’ on an equal basis with others. This includes Deaf people. There is a distinct lack of research which explores the extent to which Article 13 UNCRPD is implemented in practice and which actively involves Deaf people in its implementation and monitoring. This paper shares findings from a rights-based research study co-produced with a Deaf Advisory Group and a Deaf-led organisation. It explores the implementation of Article 13 UNCRPD in Northern Ireland through the experiences of key stakeholders across the justice system including police officers, solicitors, barristers, and judges. The findings of this research study suggest that Deaf people’s access to the justice system is not well supported and that current provisions for Deaf people’s legal needs fall well short of what is required by the UNCRPD

Dis-Equality: Exploring the Juxtaposition of Disability and Equality

The (in)equality issues facing disabled people are extensive and long-enduring. The way(s) in which equality is conceptualised has important consequences for understandings of disability. The ambiguity of what I call dis-equality theory is two-fold; the apparent failure of mainstream equality theorising in, firstly, embracing disability concepts at all, and secondly, in fully incorporating the logistics of disability, particularly in relation to the social construction of such. Practices of institutional and more complex forms of discrimination are part of those deeper structures of domination and oppression which maintain disabled people in positions of disadvantage. Everyday practices, in the ‘ordinary order of things’ (Bourdieu, 2000), continue to be misrecognised as natural and taken for granted. This article critically explores the complexity of dis-equality theorising utilising a Bourdieusian lens which explicitly incorporates complex and subtle forms of discrimination, and by examining the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities’ approach to equality. I argue that the way forward for dis-equality theorising in today’s rights based era must be one that considers the nuances of the ‘rules of the game’ (Young, 1990) if it is to be effective in challenging the inequalities to which disabled people have long been subject