The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) features interesting labour law related aspects. The goals of this article are to reconcile horizontal human rights and contract law in the context of reasonable accommodation in working life and to establish guidelines by which to assess the obligation to make accommodation, for example in relation to the EU Employment Equality Directive. This article utilises the framework of just social practice, which makes reference to welfarism in Nordic contract law. Just social practice creates a theoretical framework in which to investigate the rights and obligations attached to reasonable accommodation in working life, because it may be argued that its basic premises correspond to the ultimate justification of the accommodation rights provided for by the UNCRPD: the idea of social inclusion. The first part of the article seeks to identify common features between the UNCRPD and contract law. It sketches the theoretical framework of just social practice, in which contract law and human rights coincide within the context of employment. The second part of the article elaborates what the process of reasonable accommodation within the framework of just social practice constitutes and introduces specific steps that are followed when the right to accommodation is in question. The article also identifies the factors that have an influence on reasonableness evaluations as being either internal or external to the contractual relationship and exemplifies how contract law principles are to be applied when assessing reasonableness. The article argues that reconciliation of the goals of private law and human rights within the framework of just social practice makes it possible to argue that contract law principles can function as a tool for social inclusion.

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This article reports the results of a socio-legal investigation into how continued work among people living with progressive cognitive impairments such as mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or early onset dementia (EOD) can be supported. This study that makes use of empirical data collected in Finland, Sweden and Canada seeks to give voice to people living with MCI or EOD and set their experiential knowledge in dialogue with equality rights related tools provided by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). The results illustrate that there are effective tools available that remove barriers to participation and support continued work of employees living with cognitive impairments at least for some time while impairments are mild. Ideally, flexibility and solidarity in the workplace automatically eliminates the effects of individual impairment. However, cognitive impairments are often such that along with general accessibility measures individual accommodations are needed. Supporting continued work expands the freedom to continue meaningful work in the preferred manner and offers people the means to gain a livelihood and participate in society as a member of the work community on equal basis with others.