Who should Speak for Justice?

I wish we put as much pressure on society to change as we put on young disabled people to learn self-advocacy skills. This is a particular problem within education and advocacy spaces, where the concept of self-advocacy is considered to be somewhat sacred. I used to really push for these skills, believing that they were the only way I’d been successful, thus it was vital that other disabled people could do the same. But the older I get and the deeper I dive into social research the more I see that we desperately need systemic change.

I was reading some really interesting work by Luke Clements and Janet Read today which helped clarify some of my thoughts. The book in question is a review of the implications of the Human Rights Act 1998 for disabled people in the UK. The chapter in question analysed domestic, European and international cases concerning the human rights of disabled people. A portion of the chapter discusses access to justice and what that specifically means for disabled people, who may need additional resources in order to exercise their right to justice. Court buildings may not be accessible, disabled people may not have the funds to start legal proceedings, and a disabled person may be considered to lack capacity. These are only a few of the access barriers disabled people face. Often we think the answer to solving issues of inaccessibility or broader rights violations is to take those issues to the courts. But what if you can’t. What if the very mechanism designed to protect our rights is the thing that prevents us from challenging violations of our rights? What do we do then? It becomes a vicious circle of not having our rights upheld in the first place, but then not being able to do anything about it because the justice system is so terribly inaccessible.

This inevitably bleeds over into other areas of our lives. The situation with the courts is a particularly egregious example but I see it everywhere. The responsibility is always on the individual to act. Speak up, take action, self-advocate and make the change happen. So rarely is the responsibility placed on society to change so that disabled people don’t have to expend energy and resources that we may not even have trying to change an inaccessible system.

I’m not going to dispute that self-advocacy skills are a necessary part of succeeding as a disabled person. But I’m also not willing to say that this is a good thing. The need for such skills is a direct result of the inaccessible world we live in, not something that we should celebrate. If you’re a disabled child, adults will often go out of their way to create opportunities for you to learn to self-advocate. You’ll be expected to ask for books in a format you can read or find someone and politely ask them to assist you to find your way to the bathroom even when there’s an adult who could have assisted you right there. Perhaps it’s necessary that disabled children learn to do these things, but I can’t help thinking that we never take essential resources away from non-disabled children in order to teach them how to speak up.

I’d like to see us move towards asking society to take action as a collective. How can we all make things a little more accessible. For some of us that might mean using our vote wisely or putting pressure on elected officials to create equitable policies. Others might be in charge of policymaking within a particular institution and so can make changes from within. Activists have been asking for this for a while, and there are absolutely political movements built on this philosophy. But I see a gap in some disability advocacy movements and certainly within education focused spaces.

We don’t exist in a vacuum. The very nature of living in a society means we are a part of something bigger. Instead of expecting an individual to single-handedly change the outcome of their life, we need to take collective responsibility and ensure that every person has the best chance in life, regardless of whether they can ask for it or not.