ARCH: Disability Law Centre
Staff meeting at ARCH (Viktoria Prokhorova is fifth from the right) |
The Donner Civic Leadership Fellowship, administered by Pro Bono Students Canada, provided me with the opportunity to work at the ARCH Disability Law Centre for 15 weeks during the summer of 2008. ARCH is a community legal aid clinic dedicated to defending and advancing the equality rights of people with disabilities.
I applied for the Donner Fellowship with a proposal for a discrete project in law reform in the area of administrative law. The objective of this project is to enhance access to justice for people with disabilities by identifying barriers that people with disabilities face in accessing administrative tribunals in Ontario, and making recommendations on how these barriers can be eliminated. With the strong support of the staff at ARCH, I have been assessing the accessibility of the practices and procedures of the Social Benefits Tribunal, the Landlord and Tenant Board and the Workplace and Safety Appeals Board for people with disabilities. I conducted primary research by developing and distributing surveys to appellants/applicants with disabilities, as well as lawyers and community workers. The findings of these surveys, as well as focus groups and literature review, will be analyzed and summarized in a report which will be distributed to the Chairs of the aforementioned Tribunals. This work will be an invaluable resource for everyone working towards improving access to justice for people with disabilities.
In addition to the project on accessibility of Tribunals, I assisted lawyers with drafting submissions to the Law Society of Upper Canada and the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario. I also assisted with providing disability law education to lawyers.
I am very grateful for this opportunity to make a direct impact on enhancing access to justice for people with disabilities.
