Deaf access to justice in Northern Ireland: rethinking ‘Reasonable Adjustment’ in the Disability Discrimination Act

Abstract

This article provides findings of a qualitative study exploring the interactions of eight Deaf participants and one hearing ally with the justice system in Northern Ireland, where the Disability Discrimination Act requires solicitors to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ in order to provide effective access to Deaf clients. Three thematic categories emerged: (a) barriers to accessing justice, (b) work Deaf people do for access, and (c) the need to educate solicitors about access. A central strain ran through these themes: the idea that ‘reasonable adjustment’ must reflect the value of sign language interpreters in facilitating effective communication access for all the parties.

Keywords:

• United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD)
• Disability Discrimination Act (DDA)
• access to justice
• effective communication access
• reasonable adjustment
• disability studies

Notes

1 The authors’ capitalization of the letter, ‘d,’ in ‘Deaf,’ indicates that the eight participants in this project embrace their identity as members of the Deaf community. Also, the term, ‘Deaf,’ includes not only people born deaf, but also those who are hard of hearing.

2 In Section 14.7 of a preliminary report by Lord Justice Gillen (2016) of the Northern Ireland judiciary, he indicates the justice system’s recognition that a sign language interpreter may qualify as a reasonable adjustment (184).

3 See http://blacklivesmatter.com. A common chant at Black Lives Matter rallies is, ‘No justice, no peace!’

4 One participant was a hearing ally with typical hearing with extensive experience advocating for equality and inclusion for Deaf people in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in the world.

5 All participant names are pseudonyms.

6 A video recording would require a BSL interpreter to watch the recording after the event and voice the participant’s signs into a tape recorder, whereas the audio recording eliminates that step.

7 According to Barnes and Sheldon (2010), ‘free market economies throughout the world have generated unprecedented inequalities’ and have ‘led to the systematic exclusion of people with perceived impairments from the mainstream of economic and community life in almost all societies’ (771).

8 The acronym, CART, stands for ‘computer-aided real-time transcription,’ whereby a stenographer records spoken dialogue via shorthand machine linked to a computer that converts the dialogue from shorthand to English and displays it on a screen. CART in the United Kingdom is known as ‘palantype.’ See https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/palantype

9 This was a CBS television series that ran from 1957 to 1963, starring Richard Boone: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050025/

10 Northern Ireland is not unique in that solicitors seek to limit their responsibility to pay for interpreter services. Attorneys in the United States also resist paying for sign language interpreters claiming it is a fiscal burden. See, e.g. United States v Tirone, https://www.ada.gov/tirone.htm

11 According to Section 14.70 of a draft report of Review of Civil and Family Justice: The Review Group’s Draft Report on Civil Justice, ‘It is essential that, where reasonable adjustments are required to support attendance at court or participation in court proceedings, these are identified at the earliest possible opportunity. It is important, therefore, that legal practitioners, frequently the first point of contact for people coming to court, play a proactive role in identifying the precise nature of the reasonable adjustment required and take steps to ensure that the DLO at the relevant court office is notified accordingly in advance of the case being listed for hearing. The changes proposed to court documentation above will prompt legal practitioners to consider individual requirements at an early stage’ (Gillen 2016).

Additional information

Funding

Syracuse University Small Scale Funds Award; Syracuse University Burstyn Endowed Fund for Collaborative Research Competition.