Technology Transfer Trends in the Department of Education

The National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR), U.S. Department of Education, is the only federal agency mandated to improve the functional capabilities of people with disabilities. The application of technology is one means for addressing this mandate, so NIDRR operates programs that research, develop and commercialize assistive technology devices and services. To support this activity, the NIDRR collaborates with other federal agencies, and supports a national technology transfer center focused on bringing new or improved products to the marketplace.     

CURRENT TRENDS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHINESE SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEM FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

The Law on the Protection of Disabled Persons is the first social security legislation in China, with more than 50 laws directly related to the legal protection of the rights of persons with disabilities and career development for people with disabilities. In terms of employment protections for people with disabilities, it is important to focus on effective legal implementation, utilizing legal rulings to limit employment discrimination against people with disabilities. Educational protections are an important precondition for enabling people with disabilities to live with dignity; it should be guaranteed that people with disabilities are provided “reasonable accommodation” in educational conditions. A barrier-free environment is a necessary condition for social integration of people with disabilities. At the same time, it also benefits other members of the society such as the elderly. Through rehabilitation and exercise, most people with disabilities can return to the society to a significant degree. China should gradually expand the legislative scope of rehabilitation service fee reductions and legal categories of auxiliary appliances, issuing guiding documents that provide specifications for the relevant “dormant” legal provisions.     

Availability and Accessibility of the Nation's Research Infrastructure: The Transfer of Assistive Technologies by Federal Laboratories

The Federal Laboratories have almost 30 years of history in technology transfer. This paper examines some critical factors leading and impeding success, in terms of strategic partnerships, mission relevance and transfer context. The paper also considers future potential for transfers to the field of assistive technology for people with disabilities.     

Does accessible technology need an ‘entrepreneurial state’? The creation of an EU market of universally designed and assistive technology through state aid

EU State aid law has sought to enable people with disabilities to obtain employment, yet has not been explicitly included in the toolbox of policy options to improve the availability and choice of accessible technology within the EU Internal market. This seems to be the consequence of an inherent bias against State intervention in the market, which is mostly unwelcome since it can limit open and free competition. This also reiterates the ‘less-aid’ policy and the purely economic approach to State aid professed by the European Commission. Against this background, this article discusses the potential for EU State aid policy to foster both ‘design for all’ and innovative assistive devices for people with disabilities. It seeks to argue that the goal of an EU-wide market of accessible technology can be achieved using EU State aid law. In particular, this article aims to highlight that a more targeted use of EU State aid law can lead developers to increase the production of accessible goods, to adjust or reduce prices and to provide consumers with a greater degree of choice in a greater number of marketplaces. Whilst it adopts a legal approach, this analysis relies inter alia on economic evidence and recalls the pamphlet recently published by Mazzuccato, from which the title of this work has drawn inspiration.     

Disability and the legal profession in the United States

There are more people with disabilities than any other minority group in the United States. However, little attention is paid to lawyers and potential lawyers with disabilities. This article examines difficulties faced by people with a disability as law students through to participation in the legal profession. Aspects of discrimination and issues relating to discipline of lawyers and disabilities are canvassed. The legal profession in the United States is taking steps to increase representation of people with a disability in its ranks but it is a slow process.     

论我国公民的免于匮乏权

美国前总统富兰克林.罗斯福面对经济危机提出了包括公民应该享有"免于匮乏的自由"的著名四大自由。我国的法学理论中虽然没有这一概念,但宪法中关于"国家合理安排积累和消费,兼顾国家、集体和个人的利益,在发展生产的基础上,逐步改善人民的物质生活和文化生活"的规定,实质上就是关于公民免于匮乏权的表述。本文从现代国家的职责、国家权利(义务)与公民权利(义务)关系的角度论述了保障公民免于匮乏权是国家的法律义务,不能将此任推给公民家庭及个人,并通过对我国实践的剖析,提出应当避免过度从政策层面、经济层面及公民个人努力层面对公民进行免于匮乏权保障的路径选择,而应靠国家义务性、实践路径上的法律制度性来实现。     

Technology and special needs provision in the UK: is current law satisfactory?

Recently, the government has issued legislation on disability discrimination (the UK Disability Discrimination Act 2005) that is silent on the issue of access to technology for those adults and minors with special needs/disabilities either in the classroom or out of the classroom. At the same time, commercial legislation from Europe drives forward with new directives on the regulation of technology as part of the European Union's Lisbon Goals to make Europe more efficient through the use of Information Communications Technologies (ICTs) and to provide an increasing array of on-line services (payment of taxes, licensing, identity cards, and access to public services). With more rapid provision of public and private services on-line, there is a pressing need to ask to what extent current legislation should address access to assistive technology for those with special needs and disabilities. Furthermore, the legal obligation on government to provide ICTs as communications aids in school classrooms either as an auxiliary aid or service, or as an education and associated service for those who are disabled is unclear under current UK disability discrimination and special needs law. As far as the writer is aware, currently, no study as yet has reviewed disability and SEN legislation to determine what obligations (if any) arise on government to provide communications aids based on ICTs to children with disabilities. And yet, disability remains a central issue.     

论解除权效力之法理构成

解除权效力的法理构成,历来为理论上的重大争论。作为对违约救济路径的救济手段,解除权的行使使得遵守合同一方当事人得以从原合同关系的约束中解放出来;作为违约救济体系的重要元素,解除权担负着协调返还请求权与损害赔偿请求权的使命。基于此,使得解除权发挥变更原合同关系为返还性债务关系是十分合理的,同时足以彰显其作为形成权之一种的基本权利属性。     

Autonomy, justice, and disability

In this Article, Professor Carlos A. Ball explores the philosophical foundations for the types of rights and benefits that our society currently provides to individuals with disabilities. The concept of autonomy places on society a moral obligation to assist individuals with disabilities when their basic human functional capabilities are impaired. The exercise of this obligation entails assisting individuals with crossing a minimum threshold of functional capabilities below which it is not possible to lead autonomous lives. In making this argument, Professor Ball responds to libertarian critics who contend that notions of freedom or liberty proscribe an activist role for government in this arena. He explains how even a libertarian state redistributes wealth in order to provide for some incapacities. Professor Ball also disputes the idea that the meeting of the needs of the disabled is enough to provide moral justification for the rights and benefits provided to individuals with disabilities. The problem with the concept of needs, Professor Ball argues, is that it fails to account sufficiently for the human good of personal autonomy.     

PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES AND THEIR SEXUAL,REPRODUCTIVE, AND PARENTING RIGHTS: AN INTERNATIONAL AND COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

Despite important gains in human rights, persons with disabilities — and in particular women and girls with disabilities — continue to experience significant inequalities in the areas of sexual, reproductive, and parenting rights. Persons with disabilities are sterilized at alarming rates; have decreased access to reproductive health care services and information; and experience denial of parenthood. Precipitating these inequities are substantial and instantiated stereotypes of persons with disabilities as either asexual or unable to engage in sexual or reproductive activities, and as incapable of performing parental duties. The article begins with an overview of sexual, reproductive, and parenting rights regarding persons with disabilities. Because most formal adjudications of these related rights have centered on the issue of sterilization, the article analyzes commonly presented rationales used to justify these procedures over time and across jurisdictions. Next, the article examines the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the attendant obligations of States Parties regarding rights to personal integrity, access to reproductive health care services and information, parenting, and the exercise of legal capacity. Finally, the article highlights fundamental and complex issues requiring future research and consideration.     

关于我国残疾人福利法律制度构建之思考

构建残疾人福利法律制度是残疾人权益保障事业的重要一环,目前我国残疾人福利保障的立法体系仍未建立,现有相关法律制度对各类残疾人福利的保障有欠平等,国家责任原则未得到充分体现。今后,应科学构建残疾人福利法律制度体系,明确保障残疾人福利权理念和维护残疾人的尊严之理念,贯彻残疾人福利保障的国家责任原则。     

Welfare Reform and the Shifting Threshold of Support for Disabled People

Among the highly significant changes to the benefits system made by the Welfare Reform Act 2012 is provision for a new disability benefit, personal independence payment (PIP). PIP is replacing disability living allowance (DLA), received by three million people, as the principal form of state financial support towards disability‐related care and mobility costs for those of working age. The legislation, including regulations prescribing a new disability assessment framework, plays its traditional role in this field of rationing access to benefit and directing front‐line policy implementation. This article examines how, in the context of the Coalition government's welfare reforms, PIP shifts the threshold of entitlement for people with disabilities and it assesses PIP's potential impact on equality and the right to independent living, to whose realisation disability benefits may be expected to contribute significantly. It also considers the impact on disabled people of other relevant reforms, including the controversial ‘bedroom tax’.     

Legal obligation as a duty of deference

An enduring question in political and legal philosophy concerns whether we have a general moral obligation to follow the law. In this paper, I argue that Philip Soper’s intuitively appealing effort to give new life to the idea of legal obligation by characterising it as a duty of deference is ultimately unpersuasive. Soper claims that people who understand what a legal system is and admit that it is valuable must recognise that they would be morally inconsistent to deny that they owe deference to state norms. However, if the duty of deference stemmed from people’s decision to regard the law as valuable as Soper argues, then people who do not admit the value of the state would have no duty as such to defer to its norms. And, more importantly, people who admit the value of the state would have a duty not to defer to particular norms, namely those norms which violate the values that ground their preference for a state. This critique of Soper operates within his parameters by accepting his claim that moral consistency generates reasons to act. Even on those terms, Soper’s defence of legal obligation as a duty of deference is unpersuasive. I wish to thank John Tasioulas, Joseph Raz, Bill Edmundson, Adam Cureton, the editors and referees of Law and Philosophy, and the participants of the Society for Applied Philosophy 25th anniversary conference, July 2005, St Anne’s College, Oxford.     

Toward a Theory of Prisoners' Rights

This paper explores the issue of prisoners' rights. The conditions of incarcerated people in jails and prisons include psychological and physical deterioration brought on by their condition of confinement. The one sanction that has been debated extensively in the United States is the death penalty. Yet there are numerous losses or deprivations short of death that we might impose on legal offenders. In addition to broader issues such as the nature of rights and the basic moral rights possessed by individuals, issues specific to the rights of serious legal offenders are distinguished and discussed. The latter issues include whether offenders forfeit all or some of their moral rights, whether their retained rights are less stringent, whether the state has any obligation to facilitate exercise of their retained rights, and what specific rights prisoners retain or acquire.     

The State of the Science in Technology Transfer: Implications for the Field of Assistive Technology

The Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Technology Transfer (T²RERC) hosted a “State of the Science” conference in November, 2001. The conference reviewed technology transfer work within the field of assistive technology, and summarized related work in public, private and academic sectors. Invited speakers prepared papers on various topics concerning technology transfer, and related their findings to the field of assistive technology during the ensuing discussion sessions. This paper provides an overview of the material presented by the participants, and explores the implications of their findings for one particular field of application—assistive technology for people with disabilities.     

Conceiving harm: disability discrimination in assisted reproductive technologies

Applying the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to denials of treatment by assisted reproductive technology (ART) practitioners raises particularly challenging legal and ethical issues. On the one hand, the danger that physicians will inappropriately deny treatment to patients with disabilities is especially worrisome in the context of ARTs, given the widespread stigma associated with reproduction by individuals with disabilities. On the other hand, patients' disabilities may sometimes have potentially devastating implications for any child resulting from treatment, including the possibility that the child will be born with life-threatening or seriously debilitating impairments. Some physicians have strong ethical objections to helping patients become pregnant in the face of such risks. In this Article, Professor Coleman develops a framework for applying the ADA to disability-based denials of ARTs that addresses these competing considerations. In recognizing risks to the future child as a potential defense to a disability discrimination claim, Professor Coleman rejects the view of some commentators that such risks are relevant to reproductive decisions only if the child is likely to suffer so much that he or she would prefer not to exist. Instead, he proposes that, when a patient's disabilities create significant risks to the future child, the question should not be whether the child's life is likely to be so awful that nonexistence would be preferable, but how the risks and benefits of the requested treatment compare to those associated with other available reproductive and parenting options. Professor Coleman provides a theoretical justification for adopting this comparative framework, and examines how ADA precedents developed in other contexts should be applied to decisions about ARTs.     

Do Androids Dream of Electric Free Speech? Visions of the Future of Copyright,Privacy and the First Amendment in Science Fiction

Science fiction authors have long projected the future of technology, including communication devices and the way in which future societies may use them. These visions of future technology, and their implications on the future of media law and policy, are explored in three areas in particular – copyright, privacy and the First Amendment. Themes examined include moving toward massively open copyright systems, problems of perpetual surveillance by the state, rights of obscurity in public places threatened by wearable and implantable computing devices, and free speech rights of autonomous machines created by humans. The essay concludes with a rebuttal to recent critics of legal scholarship by suggesting the value in exploratory, forward-looking research that examines the problems judges and policymakers may be addressing in the near and distant future.     

Assuming Free Speech

Free speech is commonly seen in negative terms as a limitation on government action that restricts speech. Although there have long been arguments that government also has an obligation to act in support of free speech – in part because common free speech rationales appear to involve more than a negative right – much free speech law adopts a negative understanding. This article examines assumptions within negative approaches to free speech and finds little reason to support the idea that free speech exists primarily when the state is not directly limiting speech. On this analysis, arguments about free speech should be reframed. New questions would emerge about what legal limitations and obligations should be applied in the name of free speech and through what methods. The limited recognition given to positive free speech by, for example, the European Court of Human Rights would warrant further development. Free speech would have important positive and negative aspects.     

Enabling Exploitation: Law in the Gig Economy

This article describes the almost total failure of legal systems to criminalize, regulate or restrict the crimes of capitalism and its institutions in the “uber/gig” economy. It examines how the technologically-enabled theft of time, space and wages from employees has been normalized and even celebrated. These unregulated excesses have exacerbated political, cultural and economic inequality and threatened or destroyed quality of life for millions. To understand why and how these harmful practices have attracted so little regulatory or criminal attention, the article examines how neoliberal capitalism, in its constant search for new ways to outsource costs and maximize profits, intersects with the democratic state and its professed obligation to prevent capital from “going too far” at the expense of citizens of that state.     

国家环境保护义务的溯源与展开

"因雾霾状告环保局第一案"暴露出环境保护领域法律判断与社会认同的矛盾,需要对政府环境保护职责之根源——国家环境保护义务问题予以理论回应。国家环境保护义务的证立,不能简单根据保障基本权利之国家义务体系进行演绎推理,而应从国家任务的现实需要出发进行归纳推理。环境基本国策是国家环境保护义务的宪法规范形态,是对所有国家权力构成约束的"国家目标条款"。国家环境保护义务在内涵上包括:现状保持义务、危险防御义务、风险预防义务。"立法+行政"是我国实现国家环境保护义务的基本路径。现行宪法第26条和第9条第2款共同表述了环境基本国策,并具有"国家目标条款"的规范效力。现阶段我国环境保护领域的国家任务,应围绕新修订的环境保护法的规定,从现状保持、危险防御、风险预防三个方面展开,共同推进国家环境保护义务的实现。