Linking Information for Adaptive and Accessible Child-Friendly Courts

The Link project aims to improve the accessibility and integration of child protection systems in criminal proceedings for children, particularly children with intellectual and/or psychosocial disabilities. This includes ensuring disability-, age- and gender-appropriate decision-making to protect, support and accommodate child victims.

The project sets out two main objectives: - Build the capacity of criminal justice professionals to guarantee non-discrimination of child victims with intellectual and/or psychosocial disabilities - Optimise or develop integration of child protection systems in criminal proceedings

Global Symbols has been asked to support an AAC part of the Link project working with Sabine Lobnig based in Austria. One aspect is information about child friendly accessible technology systems that enable the participation of children with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities and AAC users to participate in criminal proceedings. This and the other objectives are provided in more detail thanks to the project co-ordinating organisation called Validity Foundation in Hungary. Other participants involved in the project have a wide range of expertise in the field of European juvenile justice systems and come from Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechia, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal and Slovenia.

A judge in a court - symbol thanks to ARASAAC

One of the major conundrums for us is exploring the way complex vocabularies used within any legal setting are rarely found as pictographics in freely available AAC symbol sets. Also how many of the words that are used make sense out of context? Developing symbols to represent concepts such as 'rights, best interests, respect and dignity' have previously been seen in pictures that have a whole story around them, rather than single or even combimed AAC symbols in a style known to potential users.