Applying the Communication Bill of Rights to Enact Principles of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility

This article situates the revised Communication Bill of Rights (National Joint Committee for the Communication Needs of Persons with Severe Disabilities, 2024) within a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) framework. With an emphasis that diversity should be inclusive of disability, this work postulates the interconnectedness of DEIA and the communication rights of individuals with severe disabilities. The full set of communication rights is presented, followed by a deeper discussion of four rights that address dignity and respect in interactions, meaningful conversations that are culturally and linguistically appropriate, services across the lifespan, and access to functioning augmentative and alternative communication and other assistive technology to support communication. A DEIA implementation framework is applied to illustrate the actualization of these rights.

Communication rights cannot be realized in isolation. The intersecting identities of individuals with severe disabilities must be understood and responded to in practice. The actualization of communication rights fits within the larger context of honoring DEIA.