Session 1A: The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act

Session 1A: The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act
Accessibility and the Law – Ontario and Beyond

Panel chair: Karen Taylor, CNIB
Scot Weeres, Accessibility Directorate of Ontario
Mary-Frances Laughton, Initiative for Equitable Library Access
Jutta Treviranus, Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, University of Toronto

Blogged by: Janene Michalak
Session began with Scot Weeres and the discussion about the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA), who discussed the AODA, outlining its purpose, implementation and other considerations.

Weeres began the session by providing facts about people with disabilities, and the reasons for having the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act:
Some of these facts include:
- currently 1 in 7 Ontarians, or 1.85 million, have a disability
- as the population increases, the number of people with a disability will increase
- estimated that by 2025, one in five will be 65 years or older with disabilities
- there is a critical labour shortage, which people with disabilities are an untapped resource as the employment rate among those disabled is 5 times as high
- the spending power of people with disabilities is between 21 – 25 billion per year in the US, as the people with disabilities like to eat out, travel, work and participate in everyday activities

He then described the AODA, its purpose, implementation, and compliance issues related to the AODA. The purpose of the AODA is to develop, implement and enforce accessibility standards for goods and services and facilities, accomodation, employment, buildings and structures. In order to develop the standards, some of the groups involved in their development will be people with disabilities, committees comprising of 45 people from government ministries, government agencies, academic institutions, public libraries, health organizations, etc.

The AODA, according to Weeres, is to provide a framework for comprehensive change, leading to full participation of people with disabilities in society by providing standards that will apply to both the public and private sectors of society to remove barriers for people with disabilities, with Ontario being the first Canadian jurisdiction to regulate accessibility standards. The standards will address areas that pose major barriers for people with disabilities, and include physical, architectural, information or communications barriers, attitudinal, technological and policies and practices barriers.

The AODA will provide standards with timelines for compliance in accessing goods, services, buildings and employment, with the intent that the standards will foster integrating accessibility, understanding that it is a multi-year journey.

The approach to implementing the AODA will be a progressive one, through increased awareness, standards development, education, and compliance assurance. The overall goal will be to raise public awareness of barriers of access and illustrate the universal benefits of accessibility.

Some highlights about the Standards Committee include:
- implementation and requirements dates to be phased in
- membership make-up to the SDC
- people with disabilities or their representatives
- industry, organizations and sectors affected by the standards
- Ontario government ministries
- Responsibilities of the committee:
- review practices, sample standards
- build consensus within committee
- get input from respective communities
- will have public-review process

In addition to the committee, Weeres described compliance and enforcement of the Standards, stating that
organizations will file electronic accessibility reports, where there may be incentives in order to remain compliant. Some incentives may be adjusted timelines for reporting based on frequency of being compliant. There will be a risk analysis approach to ensure compliance, with the focus being on the “bad” players and incentives for the “good” players. Compliance orders may be appealed to a tribunal, and fines may be from $100,000 per day for not being compliant for an organization, and individuals, like CEOs, who sign off on the compliance report could be fined $50,000 per day they are not compliant.

Weeres stated that there are 4 components for compliance assurance framework:
1) public education and outreach
- obligated organizations
2) compliance assistance
- online assistance  guidelines, tools to assist for obligations
3) self-certification accessibility reporting
4) inspection and enforcement

Weeres stressed that the Customer Service Standard, the first Standard that was implemented on January 1, 2008 and public service organizations have until January 1, 2010 to comply to (private and non-profit organizations have until January 1, 2012), is about training staff and establishing a customer feedback environment that is accessible to all. He illustrated that a comments box in the back of the room is not considered “accessible”.

Finally, Weeres provided website resources for more information:
www.AccessON.ca/compliance : more information about the AODA
www.mcss.gov.on.ca : about accessibility for Ontarians with disabilities
www.accessibilitydirectory.ca : Directory for Accessibility
www.AccessON.ca : about AccessON

Mary-Frances Laughton:
Initiative for Equitable Library Access (IELA)

Mary-Frances Laughton stated that the Initiative for Equitable Library Access is a Library and Archives Canada’s initiative, with its goal to create conditions for people with print disabilities to use libraries.

As outlined by Laughton, the strategy of LAC’s Initiative will be to “identify ways of improving access to information and materials in multiple formats and will include options associated with promoting, sponsoring, producing, and disseminating public library-type materials in multiple formats”. In addition, the strategy “will also present detailed options and scalable costs for the provision of equitable library access and will explore the extent to which other levels of government or external partners should be involved in supporting sustained access.” (from the handout by the LAC at the registration table, found at
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/005002/f2/005002-1000-e.pdf).

Further, Laughton provided statistics from Statistics Canada and the latest release of the Participation and
Activity Limitation Survey: Assistive aids and devices for Adults (http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/080603/d080603b.htm). Some of these statistics include:
- 6 out of 10 Canadian adults over the age of 15 with disabilities used or needed technical aids to help them
- 4.2 million people, or 16.6% had some form of disability
- Estimated 2.7 million people used technology to help them with their day-to-day activities
- Approximately 61.6% of the 2.7 million people said that their needs were being met

Specifically about the Initiative, Laughton indicated that it has 3 deliverables, which included development of a fully accessible Internet Portal which will provide access to information for individuals with disabilities, development of an electronic clearinghouse for multiple-format documents, and development of a set of service models, standards and training to provide equitable library access. Laughton went into considerable detail to describe how the LAC is working with publishers and other groups in order to develop the electronic clearinghouse.

As well, Laughton stated that a working group within the CLA has been developed, where two of its initiatives are to

1. address curriculum development within the library school environment that will ensure that students have more training about accessible technologies and formats; and
2. survey public libraries to determine which adaptive technologies they presently use.

Laughton also highlighted that what the Initiative is doing is to keep an ear on what is occurring in the United States, specifically about Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and section 22 of the U.S. Telecommunications Act, so that whatever is being done in Canada is not being adversely affected by legislation in the United States. She related this back to the publishers and making it easier for them, as they will focus on what needs to be done to be compliant with these two acts in the United States.

In addition, Laughton also illustrated how important it is to have harmonization, as administering a regionalized approach will be close to impossible.

Some links she directed us to are:
http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/080603/d080603b.htm - PALS Survey from Statistics Canada
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/iela – the FAQ sheet, work plan

Jutta Treviranus
Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, University of Toronto
“Ontario and Beyond”

Treviranus began her section of the session by providing a before/after review of the last 15 years of accessible technology development, specifically about the Web Accessibility Initiative. Included in this was a brief overview of important dates in web accessibility, including the beginning of the draft plan in 1994, the launch of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines and User Agent Accessibility Guidelines in February of 1997, and that in 2005, 27 jurisdictions had embedded the guidelines into legislation.

Providing a brief overview, Treviranus illustrated how web content has changed from 1994 to present, including how web sites develop, who develops websites and where web sites are. Her PowerPoint presentation illustrated that how web authoring tools are used changes how the guidelines are used, specifically that it is easier to think of process than of compliance, and that it is much easier to provide a tool to give the right information than to provide a set of rules that are out of context. Likewise, she illustrated that authoring tools, because of the smaller audience that use web-authoring tools, means that more individuals are likely to comply with the guidelines and legislation.

Treviranus outlined three approaches to meeting accessibility commitments:

1. a single compliant resources approach
2. a media-rich and accessible alternative approach
3. transformational-based approach

Within these approaches, Treviranus outlined some of the problems and future explorations, specifically within the single-compliant resources approach and the transformational-based approach. Specifically that the single-compliant resource approach has five problems, notably the rejection of valuable resources that are not compliant; how a web site could be accessible for everyone but not optimal for anyone; the time and expertise factor for resource creators; a reluctance for use of innovative technologies; and design decisions not matching the experience.

As part of the transformational-based approach to accessibility, some of the points that Treviranus outlined as what is now being explored include dynamically matching resources to the needs of the individual and altering the notion of disability. Within the notion of disability, Treviranus outlined that there is mismatch between the needs of the individual and the environment, and outlined AccessForAll ISO 23751. AccessForAll ISO23751 has two parts:

1. a common language to state what is needed, and
2. that it is done by the system based on each visit.

Treviranus also discussed ARIA, the Accessibility for Rich Internet Applications, indicating that some of the
presentation frameworks for it include Dojo and jQuery.

To conclude her portion of the session, Treviranus outlined that what has been learned over the years is that no-one is perfect, and that the challenge will be creating legislation that is agile and able to adapt to changes in technology.

There followed a Q&A about the session, which included questions about funding for the AODA, and that Treviranus can provide a list of library websites that are accessible vs. non-accessible.