Safety of People with Special Needs in the Light of Constitutional and Statutory Regulations

Constitutional law, as a catalog of principles, doctrines and practices governing the activities of communities, has a guiding idea, that the state must protect the fundamental rights of the individual. The article is about the safety of people with special needs in the context of the constitutional principle of equality, dignity and the common good. The aim of the article is to emphasize the necessity to enable people with special needs not only to fully participate in the use of security as a common good, but also to participate in the creation of normative acts resulting from the provisions of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland. Nobody may be discriminated against in political, social and economic life for any reason. In line with this principle and the constitutional principle of human dignity and the common good, multi-dimensional approaches to the issue of security have been shown and free use of public and social goods of people with special needs in the light of applicable norms and legal regulations.

From Constitutionally Derived Accessibility, Towards the Right to Accessibility?

A scholarly assumption that relates to the non-stand-alone character of the category of accessibility, which is a certain normative abstract, was given the form of a research hypothesis. Confirmation or falsification of it will allow us to look at accessibility against the constitutionally determined human rights-related triad of values: human dignity, equality before the law and non-discrimination. This triad, in turn, will be given the status of an axiological ratio of introducing the category of accessibility, both to the multi-centric law system and to the on-going legal discourse on persons with special needs, including those with disabilities. Social determinants of accessibility in genere determine its legal essence. Therefore, striving to equip accessibility with the value of efficiency, would it be justified to place it within a normative framework of the right to accessibility if we were to find de lege lata reasons for it?

This study is a review (content analysis of the literature) supplemented with actual indications and a proposal for a project that can be implemented by researchers representing universities from several countries. The aim is to show how universal design and broadly understood accessibility relate to the idea of intercultural education, or how they rather stem from it. Additionally, it will be important to develop these ideas within the thinking about the changing university – open and accessible to everyone as much as possible. Due attention will be drawn here to important issues from the point of view of the priorities and prospects of the European Union’s policy, also because of the obvious need to change the social reality towards the frequently mentioned inclusion. The ending will comprise the guidelines and recommendations for those designing future activities, those implementing ready-made solutions, as well as for theoreticians who try to organize their knowledge in this area.

Non-Discrimination as a Constructive Element of Reasonable Accommodation in the Context of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

In a multicentric system of law, apart from dignity, the category of equality, which is not only a systemic principle but also meta-law, must be attributed key significance. The same applies to non-discrimination, which is inherent to it. And although one may have the impression that research devoted to the latter remains in the shadow of investigations on the paradigm of equality as such, there are areas in the social discourse in which the burden of analysis shifts towards this prohibition of discrimination, contributing scholarly interest to it. This is exemplified by the subject matter of disability and a special category of human rights, that is the rights of persons with disabilities. Suffice it to say that non-discrimination is not only a sine qua non condition for effective protection of this social group, but also – and perhaps even above all – a constructive element of ensuring reasonable accommodation established by national and international law (including EU law) in force. This is a category that appears in the shadow of research on the wide-ranging issues of accessibility and rights of people with disabilities. This thesis is affirmed by the present study, whose main goal is to confront the categories of reasonable accommodation with the fundamental value and principle of non-discrimination.