Out of Darkness into Light? Introducing the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

(Dis)Embodied Air Travel Experiences: Disability, Discrimination and the Affect of a Discontinuous Air Travel Chain

“…Apart from the general principles of nondiscrimination and equal treatment before the law, Article 3 outlines the principles underlying the CR-PWD, which include dignity, independence, participation, respect, disability as part of human diversity, equality of opportunity, gender equity and the rights of children. The general principles are reinforced by an underlying social model approach to disability, where the experiences of PwD are central to this understanding and where the CR-PWD places the responsibility on governments and businesses to identify and eliminate barriers to participation (Kayess & French, 2008). With respect to tourism, Articles 9 and 30 identify access to transportation and tourism as rights of citizenship.…”

Some Parents Are More Equal than Others: Discrimination against People with Disabilities under Adoption Law

“…Under this model, any difficulties that a person with a disability faces flow causally from their impairment. A person with a disability is perceived and studied as a 'personal tragedy' (Barnes and Mercer 1997), and the corresponding role of research and treatment is to reduce, obscure or otherwise 'cure' the disability or its impact (Hunt 1966;Kayess and French 2008).…”

“…Despite a plethora of instruments explicitly naming other minority groups and granting them affirmative protections, such affirmative protections were virtually inexistent for people with disabilities 5 (art 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) was an exception to this, yet even then it only guaranteed an 'adequate' standard of living for people with a 'disability'). While broad-brush instruments like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights purported to prevent discrimination against any person (including people with disabilities) 6 , these generic instruments ultimately failed to generate the kind of protections that people with disabilities were asking for and desperately needed (Freeman et al 2015;Kayess and French 2008).…”

“…Further, the CRPD is binding on all signatories (as at the time of writing, there are 160, including Australia) and includes an international monitoring mechanism: the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (the Committee) (Freeman et al 2015). The CRPD represented the first real pan-national attempt to protect the rights of people with disabilities, and explicitly enshrined the social model of disability in its interpretive principles (see Part B) (Goodley 2011;Kayess and French 2008 The CRPD's legitimacy as a benchmark flows not just from its passage as a United Nations General Resolution, but also from the method of its construction and implementation. It entailed unprecedented 'centrality of persons with disability and their respective organisations in the CRPD negotiation process' (Kayess and French 2008).…”

Fostering accessible technology and sculpting an inclusive market through regulation

“…The Convention does not seek to create new rights for disabled persons; rather, it elaborates and clarifies existing human rights within the disability context. It is innovative, and it aims to ensure the active participation of persons with disabilities in political, economic, social, and cultural life, by accommodating their difference (ex pluribus Kayess and French 2008).…”