Article 30 Participation in Cultural Life, Recreation, Leisure, and Sport

This chapter examines Article 30 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The article covers many, sometimes disparate, issues, although the underlying entitlements are accessibility and availability. One of the cornerstones of Article 30 is access to culture, one of the least studied human rights and its content remains contested. Culture is subject to several limitations, such as censorship, freedom of expression constraints, sensitivities towards religions, and hate speech. Do these limitations apply to the right of access to culture of disabled persons in the same way as they do to their non-disabled counterparts? Paragraph 3 is perhaps the most contentious of all. It suggests that existing intellectual property laws should be construed in such a way as to avoid imposing any unreasonable or discriminatory barriers against persons with disabilities to the enjoyment of their right of access to cultural materials.