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This article documents and explores the history of the e-scooter ban in Toronto, Ontario, Canada as a pathway to examining broader issues concerning the eradication of accessibility barriers in public spaces for pedestrians with disabilities and respectful uses of consultation to develop disability-inclusive regulations. The use of e-scooters poses a particular dilemma to accessibility for persons with disabilities. On the one hand, the concept of disability contemplates attitudinal and environmental barriers, as noted, for example, in the Preamble of the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Attitudinal and environmental barriers have traditionally stemmed from interests that are inherently opposed to the collective interests of disabled persons. Examples include attitudes that project stigma against persons with disabilities or a focus on seeking to preserve historical features of the built environment for their aesthetics, without consideration for their accessibility or functionality for disabled persons. They have also generally originated in periods of historical marginalization or exclusion of persons with disabilities. By contrast, e-scooter debates and connected debates regarding the regulation of micromobility vehicles, contain at least one dimension that could very well be shared with persons with disabilities—that is, the preservation of the environment. E-scooters are also a phenomenon of contemporary disability exclusion: policies concerning environmental sustainability, including those promoting e-scooters, are being developed contemporaneously with growing international and national legal recognition of disability rights. These factors render arguments over appropriate regulation of the use of public spaces more complex as, within those arguments, one sees two competing positive policy directions that need to be addressed: the rights of pedestrians with disabilities and environmental sustainability. This article concludes with theoretical and practical suggestions for strengthening regulatory policymaking to address these and other complex intersectional issues of accessibility policy design.

In Canada, access to post-secondary education is guaranteed by a number of domestic instruments. These instruments are: statutory human rights legislation, constitutional law, and accessibility legislation. These guarantees are further bolstered by Article 24 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Statutory human rights legislation (or anti-discrimination law) plays the most extensive role in controlling the discretionary power that colleges and universities exercise with respect to the admission of prospective students and the reasonable accommodation of matriculated students with disabilities. This article presents the findings of a review of decisions by human rights tribunals in Canada over the 7-year period of 2014–2021. With respect to both admissions cases and in-program reasonable accommodations cases, it identifies the main types of barriers experienced by persons with disabilities. It also examines the ways in which accessibility legislation, a proactive standard-setting form of legislation in Canada, has sought to improve access to post-secondary students with disabilities, focusing on Ontario’s post-secondary education accessibility standards as an example. Finally, it argues that changes to policies and practices on the ground that draw more inspiration from Article 24 of the CRPD will help to ensure that the equality right to post-secondary education for students with disabilities is fulfilled in letter and spirit.

At both the policy development stage and the point of implementing administrative processes, more attention must be paid to the hidden challenges faced by disabled women of lower income in securing and using income support benefits. Many of these gendered barriers figure within the administrative processes subsumed in the design and delivery of disability income support programs, and in governmental regimes connected (directly and indirectly) to them. As the Canada Disability Benefit Act progressed through the House of Commons, it was modified to include a guarantee that the application process be “without barriers, as defined in section 2 of the Accessible Canada Act”. The Canada Disability Benefit Act therefore presents an excellent opportunity to examine the ways in which statutory administrative regimes designed to further disability equality rights may result in barriers leading to administrative violence how to avoid that consequence. By drawing on the theoretical frameworks of bureaucratic disentitlement, administrative violence and disability equality, this article examines the lived realities of women with disabilities in order to suggest ways that income support systems can be more responsively and ethically designed. Administrative justice requires that users of income support programs obtain substantive equality-based service at first instance. This should be the experience of all users and would also avoid the time, energy and emotional investment of further appeals and/or judicial review. Moreover, both disability equality and administrative justice call for heightened attention to the lived experiences of disabled women with intersecting backgrounds in order to create equality-based and effective systems of disability income support.

Article 24(1) of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) provides a commitment to the full development of human potential and of the student’s sense of dignity and self-worth, as well as a commitment to develop the student’s personality, talents, and creativity, along with their mental and physical abilities, to their fullest potential. Article 24(5) builds on this commitment by guaranteeing persons with disabilities access to general tertiary (or post-secondary) education, vocational training, adult education and lifelong learning without discrimination and on an equal basis with others. Yet, on the ground, within educational institutions, disabled post-secondary students continue to face barriers to education every day.In Canada, the right to post-secondary education for persons with disabilities is protected through various domestic human rights instruments and supplemented by the CRPD. At the same time, obstacles for disabled students exist at different stages of the experience of post-secondary education. This article uses a case study to identify the barriers experienced by students with disabilities on the ground despite the long-standing legal frameworks that ensure post-secondary education for persons with disabilities in Canada. It further examines how law and policy may be improved to ensure access to post-secondary education for students with disabilities. This article begins with a discussion of the legal frameworks that exist in Canada to protect the right to post-secondary education. Part II provides an overview of the types of barriers that students with a variety of disabilities have faced during the course of completing post-secondary studies. The barriers are identified through an analysis of decisions of Canadian human rights tribunals and courts rendered between 2014 and 2021.These barriers to pursuing post-secondary education are identified in relation to the admissions process, in-program learning, and the pursuit of remedies. In Part III, I draw from an analysis of these contemporary decisions to argue that the right to post-secondary education for disabled students in Canada would be strengthened if more inspiration were drawn from Article 24 of the CRPD and instituted a human capabilities approach.

Laverne A Jacobs, Martin Anderson, Rachel Rohr, Tom Perry, 2021 CanLIIDocs 987

"This book is comprehensive overview of the law and disability issues. It examines definitional questions and fields of law as they relate to disability issues, including equality rights instruments, the history of disability rights litigation and contemporary access to justice issues. It also examines issues arising in the lived experience of persons with disabilities in the pursuit of various fundamental rights, as well to the roles and concerns of others involved in the experience and resolution of such issues."-- Provided by publisher

"This book is comprehensive overview of the law and disability issues. It examines definitional questions and fields of law as they relate to disability issues, including equality rights instruments, the history of disability rights litigation and contemporary access to justice issues. It also examines issues arising in the lived experience of persons with disabilities in the pursuit of various fundamental rights, as well to the roles and concerns of others involved in the experience and resolution of such issues."-- Provided by publisher.

"This book is comprehensive overview of the law and disability issues. It examines definitional questions and fields of law as they relate to disability issues, including equality rights instruments, the history of disability rights litigation and contemporary access to justice issues. It also examines issues arising in the lived experience of persons with disabilities in the pursuit of various fundamental rights, as well to the roles and concerns of others involved in the experience and resolution of such issues."-- Provided by publisher.

’Inquisitorial processes’ refers to the inquiry powers of administrative governance and this book examines the use of these powers in administrative law across seven jurisdictions. The book brings together recent developments in mixed inquisitorial-adversarial administrative decision-making on a hitherto neglected area of comparative administrative process and institutional design. Reaching important conclusions about their own jurisdictions and raising questions which may be explored in others, the book's chapters are comparative. They explore the terminology and scope of the concept of inquisitorial process, justifications for the use of inquiry powers, the effectiveness of inquisitorial processes and the implications of the adoption of such powers. The book will set in motion continued dialogue about the inherent challenges of balancing policy goals, fairness, resources and institutional design within administrative law decision-making by offering theoretical, practical and empirical analyses. This will be a valuable book to government policy-makers, administrative law decision-makers, lawyers and academics.