This is being provided in a rough-draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
QUDSIYA NAQUI: Good afternoon, everyone. I hope everyone got and enjoyed lunch and had a chance to mix and mingle. Welcome to our workshop on disability rights and access to justice. We can start by introducing ourselves. My name is Qudsiya Naqui and I use she/her pronouns. I serve as senior counsel in the Office for Access to Justice at the U.S. Department of Justice. For a self description I'm a south Asian woman with shoulder length, today curly dark hair and dark eyes, and I'm wearing a black suit with a red turtle neck and I am blind. And I will turn it over to my colleague Jessica.
JESSICA HUNT: Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Jessica Hunt, and I am the supervisory specialist for the ADA information line is within the Department of Justice civil rights division and I use she/her pronouns. For a description of myself, I am a, woman and a Alabama suit with a black shirt and really cool cobalt shoes
QUDSIYA NAQUI: So watch out, because this workshop is going to involve some participation. So are you ready? All right. Awesome. So we're going to start by posing a question to all of you and see if anyone has some initial thoughts. What does access to justice mean for people with disabilities? Does anybody have any thoughts on this? Access to the courts okay. Anyone else?
Is everybody wondering what access to justice even means? Okay. So in this presentation we're going to talk about what the Office for Access to Justice is. We're going to learn about what the ADA information line is, and the meat of the presentation will focus on what are the experiences and issues and barriers that people with disabilities face in our criminal and civil legal systems, and how do disability rights and access to justice intersect.
We're doing a little interdependence while Jessica drives the slides. So thank you, Jessica. So first I'll tell you a little about my office, the Office for Access to Justice. So our mission is to break down barriers to the founding principle and enduring mission of the U.S. Department of Justice. Equal justice under law. We work to make sure that the promises and protections of our civil and criminal legal systems are available to all communities. So we envision a world in which fair and efficient legal systems deliver just processes and outcomes; promote confidence in the justice system; protect public safety and ensure that people's legal needs are met. So we have sort of three core principles that we are working towards. Of course, increasing access, accelerating innovations in our legal systems, and safeguarding the integrity of our legal systems.
So I'll tell you a little about some of the work that our office does, so you can get a sense of both, A, what access to justice looks like from the perspective of the Office for Access to Justice, and what are some of the tools at our disposal that we use. So one of the first things I wanted to mention, and we'll talk more about this later in the presentation, is we house the Department of Justice's first ever language access coordinator. In 2023, our language access coordinator led the release of the Department of Justice's modernized language access plan, which was first last updated in 2012, and notably, among many other things, that language access plan includes provisions related to access for people who are Deaf and hard of hearing, and sets forth some policies around effective communication for people with disabilities. So integrating the concepts of language access and communication access for people with disabilities.
We also house the Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable, which we affectionally refer to as LAIR. So LAIR is led by the Attorney General and the White House Counsel's office and it is a collaboration of 28 federal agencies that are working together to move the needle on access to justice. Every year LAIR releases a report that talks about and highlights significant access to justice issues across the federal government. So just to give you some examples. In 2021 the report focused on access to justice in the age of COVID 19. In 2022, the report focused on plain language process simplification and people centered justice, and the latest report that was issued in 2023, focused on advancing lawyer and non lawyer assistance in federal administrative proceedings.
So a lot of these concepts, people centered justice, plain language, simple processes, ensuring that they there are both lawyer and non lawyer helpers to guide people, these all have intersections with the principles of disability rights and we'll talk more about that in a bit. In addition to those two significant programs, we also house the department's federal government pro bono program. So it's a program dedicated creating pro bono opportunities for lawyers across the federal government.
We also have a number of policy initiatives. We have an office of policy that focuses on both civil and criminal justice policy. We work on issues from economic justice to immigration, to criminal justice, to, of course. The intersection of disability and access to justice. And just to give an example of some of our policy efforts inside the department, our office worked with the bureau of prisons or BOP, on a 100 day review of access to counsel in BOP pretrial facilities around the country and we're now working together with BOP to implement the 30 recommendations of that report to improve access to counsel.
We also support public defenders across the country, so we recently did a tour of law schools to promote careers if public defense. Of course these are all issues that affect people with disabilities as we're going to talk about a little bit later. We also have an international program that does work to advance access to justice both at home in the U.S. and abroad. Most significantly we are our presidential mandate requires us to ensure U.S. progress on the UN sustainable development goal 16, which focuses on strengthening institutions in order to ensure equal access to justice for all.
In relation to that, on December 3rd of 2023, our office released, on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, a fact sheet that's called access to justice is disability access and to your right on the stage there, there are both print and braille copies of that fact sheet, so please do take a look at those, as is the 2023 report of the LAIR. I brought some copies along. Feel free to grab copies and take a look at those.
And finally, our office is really focused on advancing access to justice research and data. And many studies have shown that there is a lack of data about the experiences and outcomes of people with disabilities in particular in the legal system, and so having access to that data, understanding those experiences and outcomes, is critical to ensuring access to justice. For people with disabilities and other marginalized and underserved communities. So that's just a bit about our office and I'm more than happy to answer questions later on in the presentation. But for now I'll turn it over to Jessica to talk about the ADA information line.
JESSICA HUNT: The Disability Rights Section of the U.S. Department of Justice technical assistance unit operates the Americans with Disabilities Act information line which is a significant component of our technical assistance program. The ADA information line takes calls each year from business owners, state and local government employees and people with disabilities to assist them in understanding their rights under the ADA. The line exists in response to the statutory requirement under the ADA for the Department of Justice, along with other agencies, to provide technical assistance to the members of the public who have rights and covered entities who have obligations under the law.
The information line has seven specialists who take calls from the public on how the ADA may apply to any situation.
In the past year we fielded over 31,000 calls. And our moan common caller were people with disabilities, their friends, family members and advocates. So maybe some of you. They wanted to know their rights under the ADA, followed by businesses trying to understand what their obligations were under the ADA. We also, outside of we also respond to written mail from those who may not have the capability of communicating with the department through the live or through using our Internet website, and we also assist individuals in filing a complaint with the department, where their disability might prevent them from doing so using our online system.
So how can we help you? ADA specialists answer calls about how the Americans with Disabilities Act may apply to your situation. We help with Title II which we know helps with state and local governments, Title III, places of public accommodation and commercial facilities, the ADA Standards for Accessible Design which are the architectural standards for new construction and alteration as well as requirements for existing facilities. You can also ask us how to file complaints with the civil rights division and general information about disability rights laws that may apply to your situation.
One note about this, we get a lot of calls from folks who may have a situation where the ADA does not apply. Maybe it's a fair housing situation, maybe it is an employment related situation where multiple laws apply, maybe it is an educational situation. We strive in those situations to point people to the right agency, and we have a vast resource list and contacts of other agencies to get you to the right place.
So how can you reach us? Here I have our number and our hours. I'm going to read that. You can call us at 1-800-514-0301. We're open Monday and Wednesday and Friday from 9:30 to 12:00 and then again from 3:00 to 5:30 p.m. On Tuesdays from 2:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. These are all Eastern Time. And now I will turn it back over
QUDSIYA NAQUI: Thanks, Jessica. So now we're going to talk about the intersection of sort of the issues that people face in seeking access to justice for people with disabilities. We so we wanted to start here, again, some more participation. But won't make you have to talk. So hopefully less daunting. Wanted to do a little poll. So to see. So here's the question. How many people in state, federal, state, and local prisons identify as having one or more disability? I'll give you the choices and then we can see how you want to vote.
So A5%; B, 23%. C, 38%, or D67%. How many hands for 5%?
JESSICA HUNT: Don't see any.
QUDSIYA NAQUI: Okay. B? 23%?
JESSICA HUNT: No. One.
QUDSIYA NAQUI: A reluctant hand. C, 38 %.
JESSICA HUNT: A couple. Three.
QUDSIYA NAQUI: And D, 67%?
JESSICA HUNT: One, two, three, four, five.
QUDSIYA NAQUI: Okay the answer is C, 38%, according to a study from 2016, two in five, or approximately 38% of people in federal, state, prison reported having at least one or more disabilities. So as you see here, and this is a figure we're all very familiar with. One in four, approximately 26% of people with disabilities of adults in the U.S. have disabilities. So just compare that. 38%, 26%. So that is just one example of how people with disabilities are often overrepresented in at least our criminal justice system, for an example.
So now I wanted to kind of offer a few statistics, like I said. Data is really important. We don't have a lot of it, though. But here's what we do have. So approximately 5.6% of immigrant adults aged 18 64 have a disability as we talked about earlier. 38% of people in state and federal prisons identify as having one or more disabilities, and then significantly larger number of people with disabilities are four times more likely than nondisabled people to be victims of crimes. So that's just some of the little data that we do have about people's experiences.
Next slide, please?
JESSICA HUNT: We have a hand raised here.
Attendee: Children in the criminal justice system?
QUDSIYA NAQUI: It doesn't include juvenile facilities. But that's a great question. On the civil context, some of the top 10 civil legal problems that people face that relate to debt collection, housing, employment, as we all know disproportionately affect people with disabilities who are more likely disabled adults are twice as likely as nondisabled adults to live in poverty. Houses that have at least one disabled member are twice as likely to hold medical debt. These are all circumstances that disabled people face on a daily basis that make it more likely that they will be end up entangled in the legal system.
And also we know that legal and policy frameworks can also perpetuate ableism. So, for example, in many states, it's still statutorily permissible to separate children that their parents, solely on the basis of the parents' disability. So I like to frame how we think about the intersection of disability and access to justice with respect to a specific set of barriers that people face. So that includes legal barriers. I referenced one example of a legal barrier, attitudinal barriers, communication barriers, and physical barriers. These are just a way of thinking about all the different ways that disabled people interact with the legal system and the challenges that they face.
So now we're going to go into talking a little bit about two examples of how disability rights and access to justice intersect. So the first that Jessica will touch on relates to access to courts, which are just one legal institution that people can interact. They're not the only one, but they're an important one. And then we're going to talk a little more about one of the barriers to access that I mentioned, communication barriers. And how disability rights laws can form a way of thinking about access to justice when it comes to communication in legal system context. So Jessica, I'll turn it over to you.
JESSICA HUNT: Great, thank you. So specifically as we start talking about how disability and access to justice intersect, I'm going to talk about the example using state and local government court systems, and how the law specifically in this case the ADA Title II, can help at least break down some of the barriers in its requirements and in how we think through helping people with disabilities receive the proper accommodations and reasonable modifications, and other things that they need to access the court and legal systems.
So under ADA Title II, the court systems are required to address barriers by: Making their buildings or facilities physically accessible. Providing equal access to programs and services in an integrated setting; making reasonable modifications for individuals with disabilities; allowing trained service animals accompanied by a person with a disability and communicating effectively with individuals with a disability.
Many times when we're speaking to people on the line who are trying to access their local court system, they don't know that these safeguards are in place. And also many times they don't know who to contact to request a reasonable modification. Let's say it's someone who doesn't have a legal representative, and they're just looking at filing a complaint or even asking their court how to access the process. They may need something in alternate formats. They don't know who they need to go to.
Many people don't have the idea that the ADA requires state and local governments with 50 or more employees to have an ADA coordinator in its regulation, and they don't know where to go to find that person's contact information, or to access any information about the services and other things available to them. Give me just one second. So here are some of the most common reasonable modifications that we may hear people with disabilities ask for when accessing their court system.
First, they may allow they may need additional time to complete processes or procedures. This can look different for every person. It may mean yes, meaning additional time to respond to things when in court, but it may also mean things like needing additional time to get to and from meetings due to paratransit. Providing more frequent breaks throughout the proceeding if the person needs them. Permitting the use of mobility devices or other assistive technology related to their disability. And of course, this can look like things, such as letting the person use their wheelchair or communication device, but it can also look like something like allowing someone with a hidden physical disability to bring in a stool with them to set their feet on if you need it for a longer day of proceedings.
Explaining things in plain language, providing materials in alternate formats. And then specific modifications to policies or procedures as requested on a case by case basis. Now, for this last bullet, I wanted to hit on two types of modifications that people may ask for. One is supported decision making. You may see this a lot with people with intellectual and developmental disabilities who may want to bring someone into the courtroom with them, not necessarily an attorney, but another individual, to help them gain access to the process.
The important and this person may call themselves an ADA advocate or just their advocate. The important thing to note is that it's a reasonable modification when this person is acting at the direction of the person with a disability and helping them to access the process programs and activities of the court system.
Also, allowing someone to appear virtually due to their disability, in cases where this may not otherwise be allowed. Lately, especially since COVID 19 has I don't want to say died down because it's still around especially since we've been less inside due to the pandemic, many court systems have eliminated their abilities to allow people to virtually appear. And when someone requests this as a reasonable accommodation or modification, it may be difficult for them to receive that.
If you're requesting reasonable modifications during court proceedings, it's important that the attorney and the client work together to request what is needed throughout a proceeding and a person does not have to disclose the exact nature of a disability in order to request a reasonable modification. They only must show the nexus between how their condition affects their ability to participate in the process and what they're asking for. The ADA prohibits unnecessary inquiries into the nature and extent of a person's disability.
Now I'm going to touch on courts and technology access. Under Title II, state and local courts must consider website accessibility as a requirement for making programs, activities, and services accessible. Inaccessible web content means that people with disabilities do not have equal access to information. An inaccessible website can exclude a person just as much as an inaccessible building can.
In recent years, a multitude of services have moved online, and people rely on websites like never before for all aspects of their daily life. People with disabilities navigate the web in a variety of ways. And these are some of the examples of things that you would need to consider when determining whether or not your website is accessible. Accessibility of online forms, captioning on videos, keyboard and mouse navigation, color contrast and text, text cues when using color in text, size and zoom capability; alternative images on text, and headings.
Just note this is not a full list. The department actually has on our website ada.gov guidance on web accessibility in the ADA and we recently put out a notice accessible of mobile apps that would apply directly to Title II and state and local governments.
So be on the lookout for that regulation to be finalized. The next thing I want to touch on has to do with helping to use on approaches to people with disabilities to break down the attitudinal barriers and to provide trauma informed court processes. Participants in the legal process should view accessibility as part of a trauma informed legal proceeding. You focus on the needs of the person with the disability, not the disability itself. Ask what the person finds most difficult rather than trying to anticipate every need. And understand that the lack of accommodation or discomfort with the proceedings may lead to feelings of revictimization or overwhelm. And now I'll turn it back over to you.
QUDSIYA NAQUI: Thank you. And so now we're going to talk a little about effective communication. I loved so many of the points that Jessica was raising in her discussion about access to courts. You'll hear them one more time in a different frame. As you all are well familiar, Section 504 requires that covered entities provide effective communication to individuals in their programs and services activities so under Title II this applies to state and local governments, government entities, and that can include, as Jessica mentioned, state courts, prisons and jails, other types of justice institutions at a state and local level, and then Title III applies to private entities, which could include a private law firm, for instance, et cetera. And Section 504 applies to federally assisted and federally conducted programs. Which could include, for example, legal aid organizations that receive federal funding. So that's kind of where that effective communication obligation extends in justice system context.
So effective communication requires that people with disabilities can communicate on an equal footing with people who are not don't have disabilities. So the concept of effective communication really connects to two of the ideas I mentioned earlier that are often in the access to justice discourse, so that includes plain language and people centered justice. And I just want to tie this in also to the data piece. Understanding and tracking how what people's communications needs are in a justice system context is really critical, because then if you start to see patterns in those access needs, you can ensure that whatever the most common, at least the most common services that are requested are readily available. Of course that's not to discount the ability for individuals to request what they need on an individual basis, but data can be really useful in terms of thinking ahead about anticipated need and developing the financial and other resources necessary to meet that need.
Next slide, please.
So okay. So communication must be equal. So here, like I mentioned, collecting data can be really, really beneficial. And the other piece I wanted to mention here is that the perspectives of disability community can be really critical. So some of the modalities for communication that you all are familiar with, that are some of the recommendations that Jessica laid out, relate to finding alternative modes of communication or using technology for communication. And Jessica mentioned a number of communication ways in which courts have used technology, for example. And this really calls back to what Megan, Maria, and Brian were talking about, with respect to AI. The disability perspective is also equally critical in when government institutions, like justice institutions, state courts, and others, how they are implementing and using their technologies.
So one example is most states have an access to justice commission that does work around the state related to access to justice, whether that's engagement with the courts with legal aid providers. So having disability advocates like yourselves engage with those institutions, working together with courts who are thinking about implementing technologies and making sure that your feedback and your perspective is reflected there, can prevent technology being implemented by a court that is meant to advance access for either parties or attorneys to make sure that that technology is accessible to people with disabilities, to facilitate communication with the institutions that you need to communicate with in order to move forward your legal matter or to defend yourself when you're called into court. Those are really important.
So these are some of the examples of auxiliary aids that you all are all familiar with. These all can be applied and used in the justice system context. And I wanted to also just flag another point that Jessica made about the concept of the ADA coordinator. In the access to justice world, there's a real movement towards the advancement of non lawyer assistance. So, for example, in Alaska, they've developed this, they worked with the supreme court to relax some of their rules so that non lawyers who were based in community, can provide certain legal services to people in their communities called the Community Justice Worker Project.
And efforts like these are going on all around the country. And I think that we often don't think about this concept of an ADA coordinator, or someone who is assisting an individual through a justice process as a reasonable modification in this context. But you know, this is really part of this movement, and again, having disability community perspectives about how nonlawyer helpers can advance access for people with disabilities is really important.
So these are a few sort of effective communication related resources that DoJ and other agencies have put forth. And we encourage you all, as you engage with legal systems in whatever work that you do, sharing these types of resources with just state or local level justice system actors can be really useful to educate them about how to effectively deliver these practices. So that's something that's really key.
So one more thing I wanted to mention here, and I referred to it earlier, is that intersection of effective communication and language access. So I mentioned that the DoJ Language Access Plan also includes provisions around effective communication for people with disabilities. So this is simply to say that there are two separate legal standards here. So for instance with respect to federally, in the federal agency context, there's Section 504 and there's also Executive Order 13166, which requires meaningful access for people who have limited English proficiency.
So this is just to say that we've talked a lot in a session I attended earlier on Olmstead and the first section about intersectionality. This is an example of that. When you're dealing with a person who speaks a language other than English and who also has a disability, whether that's IDD, whether it's being Deaf or hard of hearing, any other kind of communication related disability, that individual is entitled both to reasonable modifications or auxiliary aids to facilitate effective communication, and they are also entitled to meaningful language access. So this is something I wanted to flag and keep in mind as well.
The fact sheet I mentioned earlier is sitting over there, with many copies to your right on and on the front 69 stage. The fact sheet lays out some of the things we talked about here today and offers some thoughts on how 9 disability community and the access community access to justice community can move forward to solve some of those issues. Definitely feel free to check that out and I will turn it over to Jessica to talk about some of the resources that DoJ has.
JESSICA HUNT: The first I mentioned when, is the Department of Justice guidance on web accessibility in the ADA and it walks through both the obligations of state and local governments and private businesses to make their web presence as a means of communication. It also gives resources how to make your website accessible that are promulgated by many different organizations including the worldwide web consortium, the access board and others. We also have our ADA update that walks through entities to make all areas of the government accessible including beat the built environment and program accessibility.
Archived on our site we have our Title II technical assistance manual which takes what's outlined in the primer and dives in detail and provides illustrations and examples. This technical assistance manual along with the next resource best practices toolkit, may be helpful if you are an advocate or an attorney trying to communicate with a state or local government agency, whether it's a court or not, about what their obligations might be, and what we see as best practices on how to achieve them at DoJ.
And then the last resource is the primer for small businesses. This is geared toward any business open to the public. So if you operate a law firm, this would be geared toward you, and it walks again the obligations to make every piece accessible, including physical accessibility, reasonable modification. It also provides for smaller businesses some information about tax incentives and other incentives to encourage them to make their businesses accessible.
And I do not have copies of these things, but they are all on ada.gov and if for some reason you need them in an alternate format, you can call the ADA information line and we can mail those out to you. Now we're on the questions slides. Does anyone have any questions?
QUDSIYA NAQUI: We have questions for you. Let's see if you have any questions first.
JESSICA HUNT: So we have some questions for you and I'll start with the first couple of them. Do you and/or your clients know how to request accommodations and other services when interacting with courts and federal or state administrative agencies? Any thoughts? We have a hand.
Attendee: To answer your question, yes, we know how to request how to request accommodations on behalf of our clients. But I have a question. In does your section of DoJ contemplate things like requesting pleadings from opposing counsel in accessible format? We've encountered that issue many times. Where we'll file a pleading in accessible format with the court, and opposing counsel says that's not the exact words they use.
JESSICA HUNT: It's not something that we that I have heard on the information line. I do know from my previous experience before working at DoJ that that does happen. We what I would say, and this is more my opinion, when it's something coming between two counsels, we would hope they would be amenable to understanding that is what your client needs in order to be able to communicate. And also we would hope that accessibility starts to become more baked in to legal processes.
There was a point mentioned in the last session I was in, talking about how in order for accessibility not to be an afterthought or something that we're always fighting for, even in proceedings where it is not about accessibility, there needs to be more disabilities, lawyers, and people in the legal system who have disabilities so it's baked in more as a point of universal design.
Attendee: I just wanted to follow up on that comment by saying that I also think this is a huge issue, getting accessible documents present opposing counsel, not just for the client, but for the attorney with a disability. I'm an attorney, I'm a litigator and daily I have issues like this with not having accessible documents. And you try to tell opposing counsel, this is important, we need this, we have a blind attorney. And we need this to be an effective litigator, they don't understand what that means, and it's a constant I don't know how to explain it to them I'm not a tech wiz or anything, and they don't know what to do and they think they're producing accessibility and they're not. So it would be helpful to, as a suggestion it would be helpful to think about that, in terms of access to justice too, about litigators with disabilities who need access to the entire process of litigation.
QUDSIYA NAQUI: I think that's an important point, Deepa, and it speaks to the underrepresentation of people with disabilities in the profession at all. If there were more of us doing, for instance, what you're doing, there would be more impetus and I think those two things kind of walk hand in hand. So, for instance, I mentioned earlier that our office is working to support public defenders and I know NFB for instance has a wonderful list serv for blind lawyers and I've seen numerous blind public defenders raise some of the issues you raise, who really are competed and want to do the public service and want to represent people who are criminal defendants in criminal matters. And I think that addressing those needs and making sure that disability community is represented among public defenders, among legal aid attorneys, is really important so we can start to move the needle on some of these issues. That's a good point.
So we also want to hear from you all about what do you think what types of resources do you think that these justice system institutions need to do better on, not only access, but also in terms of substantive issues that people with disabilities face in our legal systems. Are there tools and resources that you think need to be uplifted for them or a certain types of training that would be useful. Do folks have thoughts on this?
Attendee: I work at HUD and something that I've come across is a question about whether the federal government should be providing templates to state and local governments, other actors of this is an example of something that's in plain language or in accessible format or this is an example of a document of how to request a reasonable accommodation in a way that doesn't you know, go into too intrusive of medical information or something. And I was just curious if that's something DoJ is working on or has.
JESSICA HUNT: I do know we strive to have a model example of how to communicate with people with disabilities in plain language and that is the iteration of our ada.gov website as it currently exists. We have really changed that to make sure that it communicates with people who have the most questions, which as I mentioned earlier in the presentation, are people with disabilities and to explain things through illustration and in plain language.
I also know that there are certain Department of Justice documents that people do use for a template, even though they may not have been signed as such. Our voting accessibility checklist and some of our other architectural documents are often used as templates by state and local governments, and that I know for a fact. I can't say that we have thought about issuing a template for a reasonable modification or a reasonable accommodation, but our technical assistance manual does give a number of great illustrations of different situations that would be an appropriate modification for an individual, depending on the situation.
QUDSIYA NAQUI: That's great. And it's a good question. So in our office, we're starting sort of internally, so we have a team we collaborate a lot with other components within the Department of Justice. For instance we currently have a partnership with the office of pardon attorney where we are working to simplify a form for requesting a pardon. So that's been an exciting development. I think perhaps through the legal aid interagency roundtable we tried to collect really great examples of uses of plain language and process simplification and people centered approaches in our 2022. Report. I have the 2023 report here, but the 2022 report is available online. And has some really good federal examples of this that could ostensibly be developed as templates.
Other thoughts?
So a similar question for all of you with respect to civil legal aid, public defender communities. Are there resources that you think would be helpful to build disability access inclusion, awareness of disability rights laws. I know many of you, there's a lot of overlap between P&As and legal aid organizations and there's a lot of cross collaboration, but we wondered in terms of advancing access to justice for people with disabilities if there are resources and tools that you think would be beneficial to other types of legal advocation who are not disability advocates but who advocate for people with disabilities in the justice system.
Attendee: Maybe I was thinking about would be like a resource list of where legal aid and public defender services and other public interest organizations can refer to someone needs a ASL interpreter or CART services or someone needs advice on how to make their documents accessible. Just a resource list of all the sources collected together in one place, where people can look this up and figure out how they can find something like this, that would be cost effective, because they are nonprofits or they're public interest groups and they don't have the resources that firms do, for example, to get their own people. Maybe like a resource list.
QUDSIYA NAQUI: That's a great idea. Other thoughts? A few more minutes if anyone has any parting thoughts or questions for us.
Attendee: Specific to that last question, I think I work for a state P&A, and I think it might be helpful to get some collaboration between like NDRN and NDLA.
QUDSIYA NAQUI: NLEADA. Yeah.
Attendee: It was just a comment not a question.
QUDSIYA NAQUI: May I follow up with a question back to you, actually?
Attendee: Sure.
QUDSIYA NAQUI: Has there been interaction between NDLA?
Attendee: Not that I would know. Ken Shiotani should know. I know in my state there's a lot of interaction between the P&A and the legal the different the legal services.
QUDSIYA NAQUI: The LSC funded organizations?
Attendee: Yeah. Not necessarily the county legal aids and the only time we hear from public defenders, because in my state public defenders are charged with defending Baker Act. I'm giving away what state I'm in. Competency proceedings. If they have a conflict they may call on legal aid or our agency. But we have virtually no contact with public defenders' office. Maybe some public defender will get a Deaf client and they'll call us because they found out that we actually have some expertise in disability. You might want to I don't know whether everyone here knows what the P&A system is.
QUDSIYA NAQUI: The protection and advocacy system.
Attendee: There are ten federal grants that fund legal services for people with disabilities, that consist of the Protection and Advocacy System.
QUDSIYA NAQUI: Thank you. It's really helpful. It sounds like what I'm hearing is some more cross movement collaboration is needed between these spaces.
JESSICA HUNT: There's a hand in the back, I think.
Attendee: Hi, I'm Jasmine Harris at U Penn and I had a quick question. Thank you so much for this presentation it's a really important topic and I'm glad we're making it center stage here at tenBroek. The question is actually more of a comment. The comment is I think when we think about access to justice and disability, one thing that some of the professors today have been talking about is the connection to legal education, and how do we think about infusing disability in other courses. So you mentioned the criminal justice system. Well, I'm struck this year by the number of students in my seminar on health and disability who are public defenders future public defenders essentially they've signed agreements and going off to be public defenders.
80 percent of them are going down that path. Something is happening. Because if I look back on my time teaching, that wasn't the case. We get legal services, students who are interested in public interest on that path. So I think there's something to be said, in terms of what DoJ might be thinking about, in terms broadening what we mean by access to justice interventions and thinking about upstream pipeline interventions. So it's more of a comment than a question, and a suggestion and one that I'm giving you in a hopeful way.
QUDSIYA NAQUI: Thank you, and I will have to uplift you for a second. Jasmine is teaching a full course on access to justice. I wish I could take it, but I'm not in law school anymore, and included a unit on disability. And we just don't see that enough and I think that's absolutely right, Jasmine. And I think what exists in the educational structure, the legal educational structure replicates then, right, in the practice.
So I think that the work that you're doing and others are doing to bring disability in to other topics and not keep it siloed, brings me hope as well, that that will break into what exists in our practice. So that we are integrating these issues into all aspects, and not just siloing them into the context of just disability rights. And that was a huge reason why Jessica and I came together, because we think these issues are very inter related and they don't exist in silos and we need the access to justice and disability rights communities to come together. Because truth be told, since I'm sharing this space with all of you at the tenBroek law symposium, there is a lot of know how in our community about how to do access. That we should be sharing with the access to justice community. So we have wisdom that belongs in those spaces, so I hope that this is the beginning of a dialogue, and I hope that I, you know, in my role in the Office for Access to Justice at DoJ can help to bridge that gap.
So with that, our contact info is here. So please feel free to reach out to us. We want to hear from you. And we're happy to answer more questions if there are any.
Attendee: I didn't realize you were at the event. Arlene Kanter, Syracuse University College of Law. Access of justice applies not only to issues we think about in this room, but beyond and certainly around the room. And when the Convention of the Rights of People with Disabilities was drafted, for the first time was introduced in international law, a right to access to justice. And in that provision in the treaty, there is a separate paragraph that requires training of prosecutors, judges, lawyers, and other involved in justice systems.
And I just wanted to ask you to what extent are you familiar with training programs that are going on here in the states? Who is leading them? Are there programs that you know of? Are they coordinated? Because the Black Lives Movement among other things showed us the lack of information, let's say, in training among police officers, when dealing also with people with disabilities. So I'm just wondering if that piece of access to justice is something that either of you are working on.
QUDSIYA NAQUI: That is something that our office has begun to work O I think training, in addition to data and engagements an important tool in our toolbox. And thank you so much for raising the CRPD. Unfortunately the U.S. has not yet ratified the CRPD, which makes that very challenging. But yes, there is a strong connection between the CRPD and access to justice. There's a wonderful article that was written by Sageet Moore about access justice that digs into creating the framework at an international level.
But with respect to the training, I think this is a very nascent and developing area and I think it's very critical. One training that our office has done so far is related to training immigration legal services providers who are subcontractors of AHS and they provide legal services to unaccompanied legal children who are in the care of the office of refugee resettlement. Again, DRS and ATJ partnered to do a training for those providers about disability and how to deliver accessible and inclusive services in that context.
You know, I'm not aware of too much training that's going on. I also know that a group called access ability has done a training for the National association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and they're doing a whole series of disability and public defense which is really exciting to see. So this is a really fledgling area, and I think it requires partnership and could be built out more, but those are just some examples of training initiatives that I've seen.
Thank you all so much for all your ideas and questions and we're excited to take them back and it was just a pleasure to spend time with you.
JESSICA HUNT: Thank you all so much.
[ Applause ]