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Even though most countries have ratified the CRPD, the rights of disabled people get violated daily all over the world. In almost every country there are national laws and international agreements which should assure the same rights for disabled people. The main problem is that the laws are widely unenforced, that is why remedies are needed. There is a need for deeper discussions on tools for strategic litigation, including effectiveness of legal and injunctive remedies, different forms of compensation for violations of human rights and procedural strategies for impact, as important tools to fight against violations of disability rights. Thereby, every law system and country has different ways and possibilities to redress violations. In this webinar we want to look at the need for better remedies, access to justice and strategic litigation. We learn from the experience of international experts with strategic litigation and remedies and discuss what kind of changes we would like to see in the remedies available or what kind of new remedies are needed. How can we establish an exchange of international experience and cooperation between organizations in the work towards better remedies?

The following speakers shared their expertise:

Paul Lappalainen, Swedish/US lawyer, European Equality Law Network: Access to justice / Access to remedies
Mari Siilsalu, lawyer at Article 19 as a tool, Independent Living Institute: Survey on legal remedies
Ann Campbell, Co Executive Director at Validity Foundation: Looking beyond compensation: innovative remedies for women with disabilities
Stellan Gärde, Swedish lawyer and author: A human right - The right to legal aid
Timothy Hodgson, legal advisor at ICJ, lecturer at University of Pretoria: Economic and social rights litigation

The webinar was moderated by Ola Linder, Swedish lawyer and project leader of Article 19 as a tool. 

In this new report, ATscale describes the enormous gains that access to assistive technology (AT) can have in health, for the community and the economy. The figures are dramatic: investment in the provision of four assistive products - hearing aids, prostheses, eyeglasses, and wheelchairs - will result in a return on investment of 9:1.

Having access to AT can make the difference between failure or success in school, between a job or unemployment, between a life of opportunity or a life of dependency. An example: for a child in a low- or middle-income country, access to AT can make a difference of $100,000 in lifetime income.

Altogether, providing AT to all who need it would yield more than USD 10 trillion in economic benefits over the next 55 years.

Investing in AT both has a transformative impact on people’s wellbeing and makes sound economic sense for funders and governments. 

Purpose: The study aimed to compare the effects of balance training on balance confidence and its relationship with social participation among clients with stroke.

Method: A pre- and post- experimental group design was used. Stroke survivors who met the inclusion criteria were consecutively assigned to two groups (task- oriented and biofeedback). Participants in the task-oriented group received task- oriented activities for 20 minutes and the biofeedback group received intervention in correckta (equipment used for balance training) for 20 minutes, along with conventional occupational therapy - 5 sessions per week, for 12 weeks. Balance Confidence Scale was used for measuring balance confidence, and Frenchay Activities Index (FAI) was used to measure social participation. Statistical calculations were performed with SPSS version 16.0 package. Statistical tests were carried out with the level of significance set at p≤ 0.05.

Results: The findings suggest that both the biofeedback and task-oriented groups showed significant improvement in balance confidence and there was no statistically significant difference between the groups. There was a moderate to good relationship between balance confidence and social participation.

Conclusions and Implications: There is evidence that many stroke survivors have low balance confidence. Therapists should assess the balance confidence of their clients and encourage them to participate in these beneficial interventions.

This brief aims to describe the lived experience of persons with disabilities in northwest Syria and highlight needs and key barriers to engagement in personal, domestic and community-based activities of daily living, which includes access to and engagement with humanitarian organisations. The analysis of these difficulties forms the basis of key pragmatic recommendations for humanitarian actors

This report presents the findings from a rapid global survey of persons with disabilities and other stakeholders which took place between April and August 2020. The organisations behind the study seek to “catalyse urgent action in the weeks and months to come,” as transmission rates of COVID-19 continue to rise in many countries and persons with disabilities are again subjected to restrictions which have already had severe consequences.

The report analyses over 2,100 responses to the survey from 134 countries around the world. The vast majority of responses were from individuals with disabilities and their family members. Within the questionnaire responses respondents provided more than 3,000 written testimonies documenting the experiences of persons with disabilities and their family members during the pandemic. The qualitative and quantitative data provide in-depth, comprehensive insights into the experiences of persons with disabilities and the consequences of government actions or inactions on the rights of persons with disabilities.

The report is organised around four themes which emerged during the process of analysing responses received to the survey. These themes are:

1. Inadequate measures to protect persons with disabilities in institutions

2. Significant and fatal breakdown of community supports

3. Disproportionate impact on underrepresented groups of persons with disabilities

4. Denial of access to healthcare

A webinar was held to mark the launch of the report

Persons with disabilities have the same sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) as non-disabled persons. Yet they face numerous barriers in their access to sexual and reproductive health services and their rights are often not met. Evidence on SRHR for persons with disabilities is sparse, particularly evaluations of interventions demonstrating ‘what works.’ This systematic review assessed interventions to promote SRHR for persons with disabilities in low- and middle-income countries.

The method involved searching for qualitative, quantitative or mixed method observational studies representing primary research, published between 2010 and 2019, using MEDLINE, Embase, PubMed, Global Health and CINAHL Plus

BMJ Global Health 2020;5:e002903.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2020-002903

Understanding disability-related costs is critical to building social protection systems that truly support inclusion, participation, and sustainable escape from poverty of persons with disabilities across the life cycle. It challenges some usual approaches with regards to targeting, mutually exclusive benefits, and focus on incapacity to work rather than support to inclusion. 

Supporting the dissemination of a background paper, the webinar presented the diversity of disability-related costs and the role of different methods used to assess them. It also presented some practices of accounting for disability costs in the design of mainstream social protection schemes as well as how low and middle-income countries can progressively build the combination of cash transfers, concessions, and services needed to address them.

Speakers topics were:

Understanding disability-related costs for better social protection systems.

Accounting for disablity related costs in design of mainstream family assistance schemes, the case of Moldova and Mongolia.

Supporting a survey to estimate the good and services required for basic participation in Indonesia.

How social protection systems can progressively address disability-related costs: the case of Thailand. 

Not either or Disability allowance and economic empowerment in Fiji.

Nicole LeBlanc, a disability rights activist, talks about the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and what she hopes for the next 30 years. Areas highlighted on the road to achieving equality and equity for all include health and health services, housing, flexible working, vocational rehabilitation and disaster preparedness.

Statistic Report - People with disabilities are disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. They must be included meaningfully in the response and recovery.