Strengthen the Facilities Available for Persons with Disabilities to Access the Justice System (JO0049)

Status quo or problem addressed by the commitment: The national public census conducted by the Jordan Department of Statistics in 2015 revealed that 11 percent of the population has some type disability, while 2.64 percent of the population has a physical disability specifically. The justice sector, including the courts, lacks systems and mechanisms which provide persons with disabilities with the needed information on the litigation process, applicable procedures, the necessary signs, and information on how to use court facilities in a comprehensible way (i.e. information in Braille or other simplified methods). In addition, there are no automated systems or electronic databases which can provide persons with disabilities with the ability to easily access information related to the litigation process in a way that takes into consideration their special circumstances. The absence of such information results in hindering the provision of key services to a significant segment of the population, particularly the services related to accessing justice. Main objective: Enable persons with disabilities to access information related to the use of the justice system. Brief description of commitment: Provide information about court facilities to better allow persons with disabilities to use the courts according to the nature and type of disability. OGP challenge addressed by the commitment: Provide justice services and access to the information related to the use of such services. Relevance: This commitment directly relates and intersects with the access to information principle by emphasizing the provision of vital information to a certain segment of the society who cannot access information in the manner that it is available for the rest of the society due to their disabilities. This commitment also corresponds with the principle of encouraging the use of technology in a way that ensures participation and use of the country’s legal system by persons with disabilities. Ambition: The Government endeavors to make governmental procedures more transparent for persons with disabilities, including those related to the use of the justice sector, by providing utmost measures to ensure the integration of persons with disabilities within the rest of the society. Without the proper preliminary work, the governmental procedures will remain ambiguous, unknown and unusable by members of this segment of society. Through this commitment, the Government seeks to define and gather all documents, instructions and information related to the litigation process, convert them into Braille language, and provide electronic formats that can be used by persons with disabilities. Furthermore, the commitment seeks to introduce changes to the related institutions’ websites (Ministry of Justice, Judicial Council.) to include pages that can be used by persons with disabilities.