A Virtual Knowledge Community for Human Rights Monitoring for People with Disabilities

Research has shown that there are systematic human rights violations of people with disabilities. Human, rights monitoring is therefore fundamental to implementing human rights policies. In this paper, we describe the design of a Virtual Community (VC) platform to assist the monitoring of human rights of people with disabilities in Canada. This VC platform enables the creation of different Virtual Communities, and encourages collaboration and knowledge mobilization among the community members including researchers, individuals with disabilities, community organizations and the general public. A description of the VC requirements, the platform design and implementation is provided in this paper.