Ireland ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) in 2018. However, the CRPD’s provisions on inclusive education have not been widely considered in relation to Irish third level education. This article outlines the findings from two research projects that examined the experiences of students with disabilities at one Irish university. It begins by considering the scope of inclusive education in the CRPD, addressing this through the prism of two cross-cutting rights, accessibility and reasonable accommodation. It outlines the Irish legislative context, identifying significant gaps between existing legal provisions and Ireland’s CRPD obligations. It then explores the practical realisation of inclusive education at the case study university. The article argues that accessibility in the CRPD is broader than both Irish legislative requirements and the general institutional understanding. Noting that students face significant difficulties accessing effective reasonable accommodations in practice, the paper contends that this may be partly attributable to the silo-ing of institutional knowledge and the lack of a ‘whole educational environment’ approach, as well as attitudinal barriers. These impediments prevent the full and equal participation of students with disabilities in tertiary education. The paper then draws on the CRPD to offer suggestions for enhancing inclusive practice.
The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is the first international human rights convention to state expressly that discrimination includes the failure to provide reasonable accommodation. The duty has been described as transformative but has also been critiqued for its lack of structural impact. This paper evaluates the transformative potential of the reasonable accommodation duty encompassed by the Convention, and considers how its potential can be realised. It argues that the duty is transformative because of the substantive equality it provides for individuals, and because it requires both active engagement with persons with disabilities and proactive consideration of barriers to inclusion, in multiple contexts. However, it contends that full realisation of the duty's transformative potential depends on appropriate legislative formulation. This may be a problem in dualist states where application of the Convention is not automatic and pre-existing legislation may be perceived as satisfying the obligation. The paper supports this contention with an analysis of Irish law, arguing that the full transformative potential of the reasonable accommodation duty has not yet been achieved in Ireland, and identifying the reasons for this. The paper examines the practical consequences of inadequate implementation and highlights pitfalls and best practice.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.