Rethinking Access: Justice Begins with Accessibility

How Accessibility Helps Us All

In order to reach the populations we serve, and in order to defend access to these services, legal aid organizations must think through how they currently define accessibility. “Accessibility” means physical and web accessibility, but it also means inclusive design and thoughtful user experience. It means thinking through how different people with different backgrounds and abilities can access the same content and interact with it meaningfully. 

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Let’s first unpack how accessibility as a whole helps everyone. Ramps, for example, can help someone with a physical disability or limitation, like if they are in a wheelchair. But there are also temporary disabilities, such as someone who broke their leg, or situational disabilities, like someone pushing a stroller. Or, maybe someone is carrying boxes and can’t see in front of them, and uses the ramp to ensure they don’t trip. While the ramp may have been originally designed for someone in a wheelchair, the use cases underscore how accessible design can help more people than expected. 

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Web accessibility can behave much the same way. While certain accessibility guidelines may originally be used with specific disability or specific populations in mind, it can end up helping a wider audience. Captions or subtitles are one such example - they might have originally been created for deaf users, but they are also very helpful for people in a loud environment, for people who are watching on mute, for people who are learning another language, for people who have an ear infection, and more. So, the next time you are snacking on some crunchy chips and watching a show with the captions on, thank web accessibility advocates who made it possible!

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How Legal Kiosks Center Accessibility 

We know that our legal aid partners have felt the importance of accessibility firsthand. For example, in Minnesota, “the COVID-19 pandemic and public health emergency moved the legal system virtual, creating a digital divide that disproportionately impacted the communities served by Minnesota Legal Aid.” Here, the move to an online legal structure made this system inaccessible for many individuals. In other words, “access to the legal system and a chance at justice [was] only available to those with the means and resources to use technology. COVID-19 made existing access issues worse as people suddenly found themselves unable to safely travel, offices were closed, and daycare no longer an option. With broadband services unreliable and nonexistent in many rural and low income communities, access to the legal system went from hard to nearly impossible.” However, by introducing Legal Kiosks to these communities, these legal systems became accessible again as transportation and technological barriers were broken. 

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Now, Reach Justice Minnesota’s statewide network of over 250 Legal Kiosks “have helped Minnesotans attend court hearings in privacy and with a stable connection, safely connect with and apply for legal aid services, print forms and documents, and learn more about their legal issue.” And, while these Kiosks help those who were otherwise barred from accessing justice, they also help other individuals who may not have even realized they could benefit. For example, a recent Harris poll survey showed that more than half of Americans have a “knowledge gap” regarding civil legal issues. 56% of all Americans believe that they are entitled to free legal representation if they cannot afford representation, whereas this is not true for all civil cases. In fact, in civil cases such as evictions, only five states and 17 cities have right-to-counsel programs, according to Legal Services State Support of Minnesota. Using one of the state’s Legal Kiosks would allow someone in a civil legal issue to gain access to the information and justice that they might not have otherwise.

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These Legal Kiosks are an example of how access to justice is tied to accessibility as a whole. These Kiosks service the entire community, including those most impacted by inaccessible systems and barriers. Now, whether someone cannot access the internet at home, afford childcare while attending court, understand the legal system, physically get to the courthouse, or more, Legal Kiosks provide a solution.

Enabling Others Through Inclusivity

It is important to note that there is a caveat between accessibility and inclusivity. As Senior UX (User Experience) Specialist Therese Fessenden of Neilsen Norman Group states, “inclusive design is about enablement.” Inclusion here is more about “creating many ways for people to engage, to equally perceive, understand, navigate, interact with, and contribute.” So, making content accessible is certainly important, but inclusion goes beyond this. Inclusive design enables people to take part in, and perhaps even ownership of, the content. 

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As we take inclusivity into account with our definition of accessibility, we need to further broaden our definition here. In addition to access to physical places, or physical words, what about access to information? Access to safety? Access to justice? Access here, while more conceptual, is no less important. As the example above demonstrates, when we create accessible solutions to issues that our clients and community members face, we end up also including a broader array of folks who might have otherwise been left out of the very system we are trying to improve.

Conceptual and Physical Barriers are Equally Important

Many of us working in the non-profit, legal aid, advocacy, and other similar fields have a shared goal to strengthen our communities, especially those most marginalized and vulnerable. Much of this comes from a shared desire to increase access to information, safety, justice, and other tenants we deem valuable. As such, we cannot hope to succeed in our missions without working to increase accessibility in every sense of the word. 

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To put a finer point on it, the World Justice Project found that 46% of low-income Americans do not seek legal help because of affordability concerns. Furthermore, 64% of the world’s population has unmet justice needs “due to being excluded from the legal system,” according to the Legal Services Corporation. So, more than half of the world’s population does not have adequate access to justice. By these numbers, the current national and global justice system is inaccessible. By working to make our systems more accessible, we can bring justice to more people. And this accessibility needs to be at all levels -- ensuring no one is barred due to physical limitations, but also due to age, culture, economic status, education, geographic location, language, and more.

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According to the National Legal Aid and Defender Association, “almost 47 million people, and more than one in five children, live in or near poverty in the United States. Legal aid providers protect the rights of millions of Americans with low-income each year in areas such as housing, consumer, family, education and employment, and defend access to services for people of all backgrounds, including children, veterans, victims of domestic violence, the elderly, and those living with disabilities.” 

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While “justice” itself may be a conceptual term, a lack of access to justice has tangible repercussions. Access to justice barriers should be addressed the same way we should address physical barriers to accessing office buildings or any other location. By partnering with community organizations and working directly with community members, we can all bring accessibility into the center of our work to better achieve justice everywhere.

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