Author: James Cawley, Policy Officer, Independent Living Movement Ireland (ILMI)
James Cawley
First of all, a big thank you to the “ALL Blog” for asking me back to contribute for the International Day of Persons with Disabilities. It has been an extremely busy year, (all online), with working from home and receiving endless updates on the Covid-19 pandemic. December 3rd is the UN International Day of Persons with Disabilities, and I sit here with straw and a mug of tea in hand, writing this blog one year since it started!
I’m a very proud Irish disabled man who is a son, brother, husband, friend and co – worker. I also work as a Policy Officer for Independent Living Movement Ireland (ILMI).
Author: Francesca Albi, J.D. Candidate – Università degli Studi di Verona (Italy)
Francesca Albi Profile Picture
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”.
Author: James Cawley, Policy Officer, Independent Living Movement Ireland
James Cawley
First of all, a big thank you to the “ALL Blog” for asking me to contribute! When doing some reflections on the European Day for Independent Living I was thinking about what I would write. I’m writing this blog as a very proud Irish Disabled man who is a son, brother, husband, friend and co – worker. Quite often I’m asked to speak about Independent Living, so this particular piece is coming from my personal and professional lived experience. I attended mainstream education in primary and secondary and entered Maynooth University through the DARE scheme where I completed a BA in Business and Geography, a Professional Masters in Education and then a Certificate in Transformative education with the Turn To Teaching project there within the University. I’m delighted to write this blog as I’m a very proud “Maynooth Access Office” alumni – Rose Ryan and her team are legends in my book!! Of course, being from a big family and being the youngest of 9 siblings from rural County Longford I did everything I wanted from festivals to shark cage diving to ending up marrying my beautiful wife Ally and settling back in rural Longford.
I worked hard in college (and loved to party) and got to pursue my passion for teaching and then wanted to hone my activism skills and bring other people along with me as a collective. When the opportunity came up in Independent Living Movement Ireland (ILMI) I jumped at it and now work as policy officer for the National Disabled Persons Organisation (DPO). I also co – facilitate on the Disability Studies Certificate at Maynooth University.
