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to make changes to accommodate the needs of people with disabilities, but much remains to be done in the areas of training law enforcement and court personnel and in providing advocates and other resources to people with disabilities.

An area of law that is emerging as another avenue to better include victims with disabilities in the criminal justice system is hate crime legislation. Although some states have included disability as one of the groups in their hate crime laws, few cases have made use of it, so that special problems it may present have yet to be analyzed.

Research is sparse on the effects of accommodations required by the Americans with Disabilities Act and inclusion of disability in hate crime legislation. It remains to be known how well these approaches will be able to overcome the barriers to participation by victims with disabilities in the criminal justice system.