Law, Accessibility and Inclusion for Pedestrians with Disabilities

Dear Colleagues,

Navigating town or city streets is often made particularly difficult or dangerous for pedestrians with disabilities (including users of wheelchairs and other motorised assistance devices) by social, design, policy, legal or regulatory factors. Law can sometimes be part of the problem, as famously argued by Jacobus tenBroek in his 1966 article on ‘the right to live in the world’. Law and policy, however, are also a vital part of the solution. At the international level, this point has been highlighted in recent years by developments such as the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the Sustainable Development Goals and the UN Habitat Agenda. Nevertheless, meaningful change on the ground often proves elusive.

This Special Issue will bring together a collection of articles which explore and critically evaluate law’s role in creating and dismantling disabling barriers affecting pedestrians deviating from dominant ‘ability norms’ in town and city spaces around the globe. It aims to reflect on the effectiveness of law and policy (at international, regional, national or local levels) in preventing and challenging the exclusion and disadvantage experienced by pedestrians with disabilities, with the aim of understanding how states might better use law and policy to foster more inclusive urban environments. Papers will critically reflect on established and emerging types of disabling barriers affecting pedestrians and on the need for, or effectiveness of, relevant law and policy responses. The nature of barriers and solutions will vary across boundaries of geography and legal systems. We hope that articles published in this Special Issue will reflect the richness of this diversity, as well as the potential significance of global and regional initiatives to promote change.

We invite articles critically engaging with areas including (but not limited to):

• Pedestrian rights and activism, and the embedding (or not) of concerns relevant to disability activists and collaboration (or not) on pedestrian access issues between different political movements (e.g., involving disability, age or gender inclusivity).
• The regulation of accessibility, inclusive design and road-user behaviour in the context of pedestrian environments and streetscapes.
• Relevant international instruments and initiatives (such as the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the Sustainable Development Goals and the New Urban Agenda).
• Relevant regional instruments/initiatives emerging from organisations such as the European Union or African Union.
• Challenges and/or successes in the operation or reform of key aspects of national/local law (e.g., equality, constitutional, tort, criminal, environmental or traffic law) to prevent and/or eliminate disabling barriers for pedestrians.
• New or emerging modes of transport or urban design creating risks or barriers for disabled people who wish to access and use town or city streets, and how law/regulation is, or should be, responding.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Maria Orchard
Prof. Dr. Anna Lawson
Guest Editors

Dr. Victor Santiago Pineda
Jim Walker
Guest Editor Assistants

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Laws is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.