Illinois Supreme Court creates committee to improve court services for people with disabilities.

In late January, The Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Access to Justice announced the formation of a committee that will address barriers in Illinois courts for people with disabilities.

One of the committee’s goals, says Disability Access Committee Chair Ann Wohlmuth, supervisor and coordinator of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services for the Circuit Court of Cook County, is to look at issues not addressed by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

“We’re not just looking to meet the bare minimum requirements of the ADA. Access viewed solely through the lens of ‘compliance standards’ may still leave people feeling ‘less than’ or ‘disempowered’ and affects basic human dignity,” Wohlmuth says. “Access beyond compliance is respect.”

Members of the 10-person committee include judges; public-, private-, and nonprofit sector attorneys; and leaders in advocacy organizations that serve people with disabilities. For some involved with the committee, their participation is rooted in personal experiences.

August Hieber, staff liaison to the committee for the Administrative Office of Illinois Courts (AOIC), says they learned from their experiences growing up with a brother who uses a wheelchair that ADA compliance has blind spots.

“My brother’s school asked us to use a specific ramp. When we used the ramp, I realized it was actually the ramp to the dumpster for garbage coming out of the school cafeteria. It was an ADA-compliant accommodation, but what did using a garbage ramp signal to my brother and me? Accommodations matter in the courts, but so do dignity and equity,” says Hieber, who also is the senior program manager of inclusive access for the AOIC’s Access to Justice Division. “Court users living with a disability have an equal right to dignity and fairness before the courts just as any other litigant.”

Of course, even those without significant disabilities often struggle to find rooms in court buildings and make sense of court notices and legal concepts. But Wohlmuth says these difficulties are amplified for people with disabilities, for whom court can be a humbling, if not humiliating, experience. For those who require sign language to communicate, for example, sign-language interpretation may not be enough. Wohlmuth, who has additional training in sign language for legal interpretation, says sign language does not have many standardized legal gestures. For example, there is no direct translation of “misdemeanor” or “felony” into sign language. Sign language interpreters who work in legal settings require specialized training to accurately interpret the underlying meaning of legal concepts. Using one’s fingers as guns to communicate “robbery” may be a layperson’s understanding of the concept, but it is not an accurate translation in a legal context. Such accuracy is fundamental to due process.

“You have to think of many deaf people as non-English speakers,” Wohlmuth says. “Signing is like using another language. In addition, 90 percent of deaf people born into hearing families have parents who never fully learn sign language. That leads to language acquisition delays, which causes lots of other issues.”

Wohlmuth says providing more dignified, substantial, and resourceful access to courts for people with disabilities is more than just a way to respect people with disabilities. Such actions likely will benefit everyone.

“Maybe you’re not disabled, but your knee hurts the day you’re to appear in court, or you’re struggling to learn English. Just from an architectural perspective, access helps everybody if rooms are easier to find and enter, there are comfortable places to sit, and information is easy to access and understand.”

Next steps

Having been formed in late January, the committee has just gotten started. But Hieber says committee members are focusing on some early priorities, including creating training materials for court staff; developing digital resources for court disability coordinators (CDCs) and court patrons; and increasing collaboration, information-sharing, and support among and for CDCs.

The committee also will be studying ways to standardize accommodations, data collection, and feedback from court patrons with disabilities.

Pete Sherman is managing editor of the Illinois Bar Journal.
psherman@isba.org