SUPPORTED DECISION-MAKING FOR PERSONS WITH INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES – WHAT IS A WAY FORWARD?

Abstract

Persons with intellectual disabilities face numerous problems in various areas of life, one of them being a practice of depriving them fully from legal capacity. In this way, they become prevented from making decisions about their own lives, such as where and with whom to live, how to dispose of their own property and income, they become deprived of the right to work, which may result in their institutionalisation in social protection institutions and isolation from the society. This practice is against the provisions of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). An additional problem is that some persons with intellectual disabilities are non-verbal or minimally verbal and can have problems to write, which poses additional challenges on how to exercise their legal capacity rights. The objective of the paper is to examine international instruments which regulate the right to supported decision making of persons with disabilities and best practices of how this right is governed and exercised in selected European countries. Furthermore, the authors analyse academic literature related to advanced technological methods of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) to assess to which extent they may be useful to improve communication of people with intellectual disabilities. The authors conclude that advanced AAC technologies may provide a way forward for supported decision making, especially for non-verbal or minimally verbal persons with intellectual disabilities. Although there is no guarantee that every person with intellectual disability will be able to use modern AAC tools, the authors believe that everyone should have an opportunity to try and use it in order to be able “to take his/her live into his/her own hands”.