Law professor charts new path on disability rights
By Louise Kinross
Dr. Laverne Jacobs is a professor of Law at the University of Windsor and the first Canadian elected to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Laverne acquired a disability as an adult, sparking her interest in disability rights. She teaches a Law, Disability and Social Change seminar and founded a centre by the same name that does disability law research, community engagement and public advocacy. She is the lead author of Law and Disability in Canada, the first textbook of its kind. We talked about her experience with disability, her work and the difference between accessibility and inclusion.
BLOOM: What was most challenging about acquiring a disability as an adult?
Laverne Jacobs: Realizing how inaccessible the world actually is. We have a lot of symbols out there that seem to indicate the world is quite accessible if you have a disability, and in many instances that's not the case.
I often use transportation as an example: how challenging it is to get from point A to point B, how much longer it takes and the hurdles to book paratransit. I think that when people don't have disabilities or aren't around those who do, they don't realize what it actually takes for a place to be barrier-free, and how many ways accessibility—and inaccessibility—can manifest itself. It was a big adjustment.
BLOOM: Did law colleagues treat you differently when you began using a wheelchair?
Laverne Jacobs: I think everyone goes through an adjustment and there are always people who are unfamiliar or uncomfortable with how to work with someone who's had a change in their life. I appreciated colleagues who were able to say 'Do you need anything?' or 'How can I work with you best?' or 'Let me know if there's anything I can support you with.'
BLOOM: It's hard because you're the one going through the change but you have to help other people feel comfortable with it.
Laverne Jacobs: It's a general concern that individuals who come from marginalized communities are faced with the challenge of showing those who are not what might be helpful. It's a difficult balance sometimes to strike.
On the one hand, those who are from marginalized groups should not be doing all of the work, especially when it comes to systemic change. On the other hand, when it's more individualized, with a narrower scope, it can be helpful for people to indicate what they themselves might need. We always want to pursue universal design and make things as openly accessible as possible for as many people as possible, taking into account that disability is a part of human variation. At the same time, working one-on-one with individuals can be necessary. And I think it's important to respect that.
BLOOM: How did your thinking about disability evolve as a result of your personal experience?
Laverne Jacobs: It certainly prompted me to learn more about disability and about how people with disabilities interact with the law. I began to engage with people from the disability community to learn about their experiences. That became much more of a central feature of my work.
Having a disability makes you see the world in a much broader and deeper fashion. There are such a myriad of barriers. Some affect me with my own specific disability and others I've learned about from those who have shared their experiences with me. And I haven't learned about all of them, of course.
I would not have had the opportunity to learn about these things, bring awareness to them and push for change if I hadn't had the experience of having a disability.
BLOOM: You published Law and Disability in Canada last year. Is this a neglected area of research?
Laverne Jacobs: Yes. Thank you for the question. I'm the lead author and I worked with colleagues from across the country. One of the reasons I thought of creating this book was that I had a seminar on law and disability and there were no textbooks or available prepared course materials.
There are so many areas of the law that touch on disability. Whether it's in contracts where there are questions about capacity and how to determine whether someone has capacity to sign a contract, to criminal law and looking at gaps in how the criminal justice system treats people with disabilities. I do a lot of administrative law looking at how governments and individual citizens interact. There are questions about government systems that administer disability benefits.
So there are all these areas of law, but there wasn't any material available for a professor who wanted to teach a module on disability. I thought it was a neglected area and I think disability should be much more pervasive in the law school curriculum. Our textbook is one way of doing that, not only for law professors for also for people in human resources or disability studies or social work.
BLOOM: I heard one of your students interviewing you, and you spoke about the difference between accessibility and inclusion. Can you explain?
Laverne Jacobs: One of the areas where we see this is with respect to social inclusion. It may be that we design spaces architecturally so people with different disabilities can attend. Perhaps we have tactile markings for people using white canes and we make space for wheelchairs. But unless there's a welcoming, approachable attitude by those in the room, the space may be accessible but not inclusive. Inclusion is a bit more about a state of mind. It's ensuring we have space where people are able to contribute, where we want to hear their ideas. This is one of the ideas I'm looking at in my forthcoming book called Disability, The Right of Access and the Law: From Litigation to Citizen Participation.
BLOOM: During the pandemic, we saw a number of instances where science wasn't followed in terms of prioritizing vaccines when it came to people with disabilities. I'm thinking of large studies in the U.S. and other countries that found people with intellectual disability were almost eight times more likely to die of COVID, yet disabled children and adults couldn't get access. There were so many people advocating for this on social media, but it didn't have any impact. People seem very able to tune out disability issues. Could the law play a role in this area?
Laverne Jacobs: So you have the science to say people with disabilities should be getting the vaccine but it doesn't play out on the ground. One thing I'll pick up on is the advocacy on social media. It can be very helpful in bringing awareness and that's something that's relatively new in the Internet age. But the real question is what do you do when you've used these tools and people still can't get the vaccine?
What's tricky is when something is still in the policy stage. If the government is creating policy, it's harder to address it with a legal challenge or court challenge. If an administrator or tribunal makes a decision about vaccines, that can be challenged. But when it's pure policy, it's harder to bring the law to address it.
One of the problems is we don't have many lawyers who do a lot of disability practice. There are so many issues out there and not enough lawyers. Sometimes these issues aren't fought when they should be.
What you're also pointing to is the attitudinal aspect. Unless people are focused on or paying attention to the importance of disability issues, we can't serve people with disabilities in the best way possible.
BLOOM: Earlier this year there was a story in Edmonton about a kindergarten boy with autism who was left to sit in his empty class with an assistant while his entire class went bowling. I thought excluding disabled students from field trips was a problem of the past, but when I posted the story I heard from numerous parents who said it's still a huge problem. Often they're told if they don't go on the field trip with their child, including overnight trips, the child doesn't go.
Laverne Jacobs: I think this could be an instance where people may be able to move without the law. You mentioned a number of parents are aware of this. I think banding together and bringing it up with school boards and governments and making noise is sometimes as effective as the law, because the law can be slow.
The other deeper underlying question is why is this still happening in this day and age? I think one of the problems that tends to happen in society is a bit of forgetfulness or amnesia of the historical marginalization of persons with disabilities. There are many reasons why students shouldn't be left alone and parents shouldn't have to leave work in order to ensure the child goes on the trip. It's demoralizing and places the student as a second-class citizen. It's also disrespectful of the parent's time who has to leave their work, and some families may not have the resources to do that.
BLOOM: You will serve a four-year term on the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) starting in January. What is your role?
Laverne Jacobs: The committee adjudicates individual complaints about actions of government. We also review country reports and the way that the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has been implemented around the world. As a member of the committee, my role is to take part in these functions.
We are elected as independent experts, not as individuals who represent a country's views. I hope to be able to share my knowledge and expertise about disability rights and to do so collaboratively with my colleagues on the committee and with the governments and people with disabilities involved.
My vision is that the committee complete its role in a way that is intersectional so that it thinks, not just about disability, but how disability affects people who are also from other marginalized communities, such as racialized communities, people from the 2SLGBTQ+ community, and the elderly.
BLOOM: What emotions come with your work?
Laverne Jacobs: It's an interesting question. Studying law and disability can be depressing. When I'm working with students, sometimes I think that every class we talk about a different struggle and the struggles are not necessarily resolved, as you and I have talked about. Then when you factor in that often students who take a course in disability have disabilities themselves, we may touch on personal experiences. So there can be a lot of emotions.
BLOOM: How do you manage those emotions?
Laverne Jacobs: There are a few ways. We don't always have to be looking at the struggles. I try to switch it up a bit. There is a section in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, for example, on building awareness of persons with disability in the community, so I draw from that and talk a bit about disability identity, disability community and representation of people with disabilities in the media, like disability-led fashion shows. These are examples where we can see that disability is not necessarily a negative image imposed by others, where members of the disability community can draw strength by focusing on their own identity and imagery, and we can work as a collective of community members and allies to find ways to develop that.
Another thing I do in our research centre is use the expression 'work to wellness.' We don't overwork. We have projects, and tasks within those projects, and we do our best to get them done in a timely manner. But if someone needs extra time, for whatever reason, we respect that. It's designed to say you can be a human being the way you are, within the parameters of human variation, and get the work done.
BLOOM: Can you tell us a bit more about the Law, Disability and Social Change Project?
Laverne Jacobs: First and foremost we conduct research. We work on projects that are often brought to us by the disability community and we produce resources that are helpful to the disability community. For example, we created an Annotated Accessible Canada Act that can help the average citizen with a disability who wants to know more about their rights, as well as advocates, lawyers and researchers.
In the summer we produce summaries of law and disability cases from human rights tribunals across the country.
Our second pillar is community engagement. We're on social media sharing information and news and academic articles of interest. We hold events and lectures and present legal-information seminars in the community.
The third pillar is public advocacy, whether it's collaborating with other disability rights organizations on work they're doing or of our own initiative. During my term on the UN CRPD, our work will be primarily focused on the first two pillars to avoid any conflicts of interest.
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