Struggling For Accommodation

Jumping Off the Ivory Tower with Prof JulieMac

Today’s podcast focuses on the experiences of people with cognitive disabilities (PWCD) who are trying to navigate the courts without a lawyer. Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have heard increasingly from SRLs with cognitive disabilities about their lack of accommodation from the courts. It seemed that the accommodation processes in place – for example in Ontario, via an Accessibility Co-ordinator in each courthouse – had broken down. SRLs described making applications for accommodations in open court, disclosing private medical information to the other side, and having to “duke it out” over necessary accommodations to enable them to meaningfully participate in their own case. In preparation for Julie’s recent presentation to the Ontario Courts Accessibility Committee, chaired by Associate Chief Justice Fairburn, on this topic, two NSRLP research assistants, Silvia Battaglia and Shannon Meikle, reached out to SRLs with cognitive disabilities and asked them to speak about their experiences seeking court accommodations. They discovered that almost all the SRLs were unaware of the presence of Accessibility Coordinators in their courthouses, or the process for requesting accommodations before a hearing. Their descriptions of feeling like there was no one to help them are captured in excerpts from the interviews, recorded with their permission. Their experiences are shocking and heartbreaking, and frustrating, since there is a process for seeking accommodations that is intended to be private, responsive, and to remove such requests from an adversarial setting. The problem? Almost no one knows about it, or how to use it. This episode also uses a short clip from a podcast recorded in 2017 with Judy Gayton, an SRL whose devastating experience in the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench was covered by CBC, and who describes graphically and poignantly the impact of her brain injury on her cognitive processing. In Other News: Guest Other News Correspondent Katie Pfaff today focuses on access to justice for Indigenous people in Canada. In the wake of the discovery of the graves of 215 Indigenous children at the Kamloops residential school, Chief Justice Richard Wagner states that there must be more education for the bench to understand Indigenous history and the histories of other cultures and communities. Katie’s second news story focuses on a settlement reached to include hundreds Indigenous people who were left out of the residential schools' class action compensation protocols. We would also encourage our listeners to read Windsor Law Acting Dean Beverly Jacobs’ recent piece in The Conversation, “Investigate discovery of 215 children’s graves in Kamloops as a crime against humanity.” For related links and more on this episode visit our website: https://representingyourselfcanada.com/struggling-for-accommodation/ Jumping Off the Ivory Tower is produced and hosted by Julie Macfarlane and Dayna Cornwall; production and editing by Brauntë Petric; Other News produced and hosted by Katie Pfaff; promotion by Moya McAlister and the NSRLP team.