Paul Harpur

Embracing the new disability rights paradigm: the importance of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

In 2008 the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) commenced operation. The CRPD has created a dynamic new disability rights paradigm that empowers disability people’s organizations and creates a new paradigm for disability scholars. This paper analyses the impact of the CRPD and provides practical guidance as to how this convention can be used to drive change. Prior to this convention, persons with disabilities were protected by a range of general human rights conventions. Despite receiving nominal protection under general human rights conventions, persons with disabilities have had many of their human rights denied to them. The CRPD goes further than merely re-stating rights. It creates a new rights discourse, empowers civil society and renders human rights more obtainable for person with disabilities than any time in history.

From Disability to Ability: Changing the Phrasing of the Debate

Persons with disabilities have endured discrimination and live under social apartheid. While enlightened people recognise the role that society has in disabling people with impairments, there remains a struggle to remove the negative stigma associated with this form of social diversity. There is no silver bullet that will enable persons with disabilities to exercise their human rights as full citizens. One strategy to assist in this struggle is the use of language. This paper focuses on how language can be utilised in the struggle against oppression. This paper reconsiders how disability discrimination is conceived and labelled. There is no uniformly accepted label to describe the discrimination and oppression that is explained by the social model or the non-radical social model. This paper explores how the labels of disableism and ableism have emerged to explain this concept. This paper analyses these terms and argues for the adoption of ableist nomenclature.

Disability and Domestic Violence: Protecting Survivors' Human Rights

Survivors with disabilities experience domestic violence both more often and differently to those who do not have a disability. The presence of impairment substantially transforms the medical, psychological, environmental, economic, legal and political factors which contribute to the occurrence of violence. Survivors of domestic violence are often highly dependent on their abuser, fear disclosing abuse and lack economic independence, and these issues may be heightened for a person who also has a disability. Domestic violence is amplified by the existence of impairment when law enforcement and medical bodies construct the survivor and their relationship with the perpetrator through an oppressive disability model. Advances in theory and international disability human rights laws may provide new and powerful avenues to critique how law and practice in Australia responds to disability domestic violence. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) is the first human rights convention to specifically protect survivors with disabilities from domestic violence. In this article, we use critical disability studies and the CRPD to identify limitations with Australias responses to disability domestic violence.

Intellectual disabilities, domestic violence and legal engagement

Abstract There is increasing recognition that legal responses to domestic violence can only be effective if those who implement the law – for example, child protection workers, police and magistrates – are also effective. This article draws on the narratives of women with intellectual disabilities to analyse their experiences of engaging with the legal system as a response to domestic violence. In particular, the article considers whether they have access to appropriate support to utilise the remedies afforded by the law on an equal basis to survivors without disabilities. In considering this we draw on the concept of supported decision-making, an approach recommended by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

The paradigm shift in realising the right to read: how ebook libraries are enabling in the university sector

Millions of people with print disabilities are denied the right to read. While some important efforts have been made to convert standard books to accessible formats and create accessible repositories, these have so far only addressed this crisis in an ad hoc way. This article argues that universally designed ebook libraries have the potential of substantially enabling persons with print disabilities. As a case study of what is possible, we analyse 12 academic ebook libraries to map their levels of accessibility. The positive results from this study indicate that universally designed ebooks are more than possible; they exist. While results are positive, however, we also found that most ebook libraries have some features that frustrate full accessibility, and some ebook libraries present critical barriers for people with disabilities. Based on these findings, we consider that some combination of private pressure and public law is both possible and necessary to advance the right-to-read cause. With access improving and recent advances in international law, now is the time to push for universal design and equality.

Accessible or Not?: Academics' Hand Written Comments on Assessment Items Written by Students with Print Disabilities

Most university courses involve students sitting examinations and submitting written research papers. Many universities provide each student with individual comments on their assessment items. Generally these comments are written throughout the assessment item by the marker to provide the student with guidance on where they can improve and what areas were answered correctly. While hand written comments throughout a paper are extremely valuable for most students, where the student has a vision impairment or another print disability the use of hand written comments can deny such students receiving vital guidance. This note discusses my experiences with comments on assessment items and identifies strategies to ensure that all students have equal access to feedback on their work.

Examining Australia's Compliance to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Problems and Potential

One of the ways through which human rights can be protected is through international human rights treaties. This article addresses the implications of ratifying such treaties by examining the ratification of the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights and Australias compliance with this convention. Rather than introducing the rights in the ICESCR into law Australia has adopted an indirect method of protecting rights. This paper will analyse the effectiveness of this approach and argue that Australias approach is not achieving substantive equality and is weakening economic, social and cultural rights. The paper will argue that legally enforceable rights are a powerful force in the protection of human rights.

Naming, blaming and claiming ablism: the lived experiences of lawyers and advocates with disabilities

The social model explains that different abilities are not the true cause of disablement. Ablist institutions and practices construct a certain level of ability as disability. How do people respond when they are being disabled by society? This study analyses how 28 advocates and lawyers with disabilities respond when they confront ablism. This study employs the naming, blaming and claiming model to map the conduct of 28 lawyers and advocates with disabilities from Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Despite their empowered position, participants often did not claim for every act of ablism. This study analyses why participants did not claim. One of the primary issues raised by participants was a gap between the range of parties who caused disablement in society and the way in which anti-discrimination laws attributed duties.

Nothing About Us Without Us: The UN Convention on The Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Persons with disabilities, the world’s largest minority group, have experienced oppression and have been excluded from participating in public affairs for most of human history. The United Nations Ad Hoc Committee on a Comprehensive and Integral International Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities arguably represents a turning point in the voice persons with disabilities have in the formation and implementation of international and domestic laws and policies. The Ad Hoc Committee realized the clarion call “nothing about us without us” both during the debates and in the formation of a convention that continues the voice of persons with disabilities and their representative bodies in the early 21st century.

Socially Constructed Hierarchies of Impairments: The Case of Australian and Irish Workers’ Access to Compensation for Injuries

Objectives: Socially constructed hierarchies of impairment complicate the general disadvantage experienced by workers with disabilities. Workers with a range of abilities categorized as a “disability” are likely to experience less favourable treatment at work and have their rights to work discounted by laws and institutions, as compared to workers without disabilities. Value judgments in workplace culture and local law mean that the extent of disadvantage experienced by workers with disabilities additionally will depend upon the type of impairment they have. Rather than focusing upon the extent and severity of the impairment and how society turns an impairment into a recognized disability, this article aims to critically analyse the social hierarchy of physical versus mental impairment. Methods: Using legal doctrinal research methods, this paper analysis how Australian and Irish workers’ compensation and negligence laws regard workers with mental injuries and impairments as less deserving of compensation and protection than like workers who have physical and sensory injuries or impairments. Results: This research finds that workers who acquire and manifest mental injuries and impairments at work are less able to obtain compensation and protection than workers who have developed physical and sensory injuries of equal or lesser severity. Organizational cultures and governmental laws and policies that treat workers less favourably because they have mental injuries and impairments perpetuates unfair and artificial hierarchies of disability attributes. Conclusions: We conclude that these “sanist” attitudes undermine equal access to compensation for workplace injury as prohibited by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.