Social Structures
Author: Francesca Albi, J.D. Candidate – Università degli Studi di Verona (Italy)
Accessibility is one of the general principles embodied in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and it is explicitly affirmed by Article 3 (f), Article 9 and other provisions of the Convention. Accessibility must be understood as “the right to use goods, services and facilities available to the public without discrimination, and obtain an equal benefit from them” (Broderick and Ferri, 2019, p. 140). Accordingly, accessibility is strictly linked to the concept of “universal design”, which is an expression of the paradigm-shift embraced by the CRPD (Cera, 2017, pp. 107-118) and which is defined in Article 2 of the CRPD as the “design of products, environments, programmes and services to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design”.
States Parties should ensure that fashion businesses, i.e., the business that involves producing and selling new styles, especially of clothes, shoes etc., as all other businesses, comply with the above accessibility obligations and endeavour to adopt the universal design concept. Indeed, persons with disabilities have the right to use goods and services, including fashion products and fashion markets, on an equal basis with the others. Consequently, the design of these kinds of products (i.e., clothes, shoes, accessories…) and places (i.e., dressing rooms, shops…) must be suitable for the needs of persons with disabilities.
The so-called “adaptive fashion” concept embraces the idea that fashion products must be designed for persons with physical disabilities, ensuring that buttons or zippers are suitable to accommodate a diverse range of capabilities and motions. This is a key step forwards towards the effective implementation of the right to live independently, which is provided for under Article 19 of the CRPD. As a matter of fact, dressing and undressing are everyday activities that everyone should be able to do autonomously as much as possible. Furthermore, shopping centres should be fully accessible, with dressing rooms that comply with universal design.
In practice, fashion affects people’s everyday lives much more than it might superficially appear. Products and services connected to the fashion market are likely to impact not only on individual’s wellness/quality of life, but also on the level of personal comfort and self-confidence in human relationships (Venkatasamy, 2015). In fact, fashion goes beyond the necessity to wear something: it reflects the necessity to express individual personality and values through non-verbal communication signals. Moreover, social conventions often influence the ways in which people are fashionable and, as a result, many people may experience greater levels of social comfort while wearing stylish clothing. In other words, accessibility to fashion products creates self-confidence and it arguably assists the achievement of effective social inclusion by persons with disabilities.
Even though some steps forward have been taken, fashion brands and companies should be more careful to avoid these obstacles whilst providing concrete solutions, preferably with the collaboration with persons with physical disabilities themselves. Specifically, companies should analyse discriminating situations from the voice of the discriminated persons (or groups) and then create accessible clothing brands and shops. In that regard, stylists, architects, and designers should operate as problem-solvers, with an approach based on innovation, inclusion, and empathy.
Since non-discrimination and full and effective inclusion in society are general principles at the basis of the rights of persons with disabilities (Article 3 (b) (c) CRPD), a fashion system which ignores persons with physical disabilities’ needs violates numerous human rights: while fashion is sometimes an evanescent trend, adaptive fashion is an expression of international obligations.