Accessibility Symposium - Ado

Darren Cooney: So we're really looking forward to having a conversation with you today. And really that's the way this dialogue will go. We are your typical government bureaucrats, but we will try our best not to be too dry. We'll also try our best to keep our remarks to 15 minutes or so So that we will have time to really focus on the questions and answers from the floor. So between the two of us, essentially we represent the core businesses of the Accessibility Directorate of Ontario. On one hand, I'm the education and outreach, or also known as "the carrot". And on the other hand, is Mr. Compliance also known as "the stick". (laughing) And of course, Ben also helped to the development of the framework for the legislation and regulation that we will be discussing today. As I understand, this morning there was a focus on the how to. How do we make museums, and cultural institutions accessible? So now we move more into the policy framework. the legislations and the regulations. That all of us here as employers need to comply with by various points between now and 2021, for the time being, though next week it will be 2025. Um, we'll talk about the business case of accessibility. We won't dwell on that because I think everyone here gets it. I know that Christine touched on that a little bit earlier. We'll talk about what you will have to do as employers and um, give it our best shot to help make it seem a little less daunting. I know the Integrated Accessibility Standards Regulations or the Integrated Regulations for short, can be a little bit daunting if you read it. I've got it here. It's 80 odd requirements, Ben was holding the pen on that. In case you have any questions about that. Um, but we actually break it down year by year, depending on the nature of your organization and the size of your museum it's actually not too bad. So we'll talk about that, and we'll also talk about how we are here to help. Because that really is the focus, if the accessibility directorate, the work that we do. Both from the public education "carrot" side, and from the compliance side, from the "stick" side. We're going to focus on helping organizations to be accessible by 2025. So let's see, I brought a remote, and it works. We'll talk a little bit about accessibility in the business case. Why Accessibility in Ontario? Well the numbers really do speak for themselves. Currently we have 1.85 million people in the province living with various forms of disabilities. We also know where the demographics are going in the province of Ontario, We have an aging population as does the majority of the Western world. Um, both in North America and Europe. So, seniors aged 65 and plus are going to double to 4.1 million in the province by the year 2036. Which isn't far off. If we think about it from a public policy perspective and from a long-term planning perspective. And then there is this little tidbit, our Director particularly likes this one, he wasn't able to join us today. He calls this the "A-Ha" moment, that by 2017, five years from now for the first time ever in the province we will have more seniors than children aged 14 and under. So it's his 'A-ha' moment. And what that speaks to is the interesting intersection between aging and disability. And certainly I think about seniors in my family and they don't think of themselves as having a disability. Just a certain way we consider the term but there are intersections between those two. So that's a bit of a business case of numbers behind accessibility in Ontario, but quite frankly it's also the right thing to do. Now Ontario is a province of firsts. Both within Canada and in North America and frankly around the world. So for the longest time the Accessibility has been doing research and looking at what other jurisdictions in Canada and around the world are doing around accessibility. And it's been a really exciting time at the Accessibility Directorate for the past several years in that we're now seeing jurisdictions come to us to look at what Ontario is doing in regards to accessibility. So most recently from within Canada, we have had a lot of conversations with individuals from Manitoba, which is a province that is thinking about pursuing very similar accessibility legislation. And I think, most recently Alberta, taking a slightly different approach to the legislation but same kind of idea of being pro-active accessibility standards. And then further more, we hear quite regularly from the United Kingdom and so far a field as New Zealand. So it's quite an exciting time to be in Ontario. And as the slide says, our jurisdiction is the first in the world to mandate accessibility instead of reacting to complaints. So you'll see traditional forms of accessibility or equity legislation that is focused on the individual and addressing individuals complaints as opposed to what this province has chosen to do and that is to band-aid accessibility for organizations and employers. and also, public, private and not-for-profit employers. Often times, we'll see government regulating other levels of government or the "MUSH" sector or municipalities, universities, schools, hospitals, but we're one of the first out there to regulate the private sector. We're also the first in the world that requires accessibility training. So first and foremost in our mind,would be customer service training. Everybody in the room will probably need to obtain it by the end of this year. For those museums with 20 plus employers will need to report about that training to the government. But we're the first jurisdiction in the world that requires again, public, private and not-for-profit sectors to train their employees and volunteers on providing accessibile customer service. And that is quite exciteable, we'll talk about accessible customer service in detail a little bit later. But there is now, additional training required under the integrated regulations. As it relates to information and communications, employment, transportation, and also on the human rights code. As it relates to accessibility. Don't worry, we have free resources to help you deliver that training within your organizations and we'll come to that a little bit later. And of course we are the first jurisdiction in Canada with a very clear timeframe. To reach our accessibility goals, and that is that year 2025 that I had spoken about earlier. We have all of the requirements in the existing four standards being phased in between now and 2025. And the structure and the timing of the requirements depends, again on the size and nature of your organization. The Ontario Public Service, lucky us, we always go first. We have chosen to lead by example, as is the Legislative Assembly. So whenever you see the deadline, almost all of them will be OPS first. And then the larger broader public sector organizations and then eventually the not-for-profit organizations and businesses. So I talked a bit about the standards and the nature of Ontario's accessibility standards. These are built upon the foundation of the accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act or the AODA. And I know that Constance as touched on the standards a little bit earlier this morning. So we'll move into a little more detail about them now. The first of the standards was the Customer Service Standard. Which all organizations in the room must have been compliant by January 1 this year. I think Constance was going to do a small poll at a certain point around that. Ben and I will overt our eyes for a moment. Actually Constance, I will keep my eyes open, because it will give me an indication about how much work I have to do. And Mr. Compliance here will keep his eyes closed. So the accessibility standards in the province are about enforcible, systemic, pro-active standards that impact employers across the province. And again thats the change in nature from the individual based legislation to the systemic. They were developed and Ben was a lead player in this process. They were developed in a rather innovative way for a government. Typically what you will see government do is, that um, we will get approval from politicians from cabinet to go out and explore and give them the policy issue or challenge We'll have a consultation, or perhaps a round-table. Here's what we are thinking, what do you think? Get the feedback, and then go away and work on that and then six months down the road, or a year down the road. There is a new law or a new regulation. And this one is much different from that. What we did, is we brought together the employers and the businesses that would need to implement these potential accessibility standards and persons with disabilities, so that the people that stood to benefit. and brought them together at the table, in a 50:50 ratio and said, "What can we do? What can we do as a province, that makes sense? That's a made in Ontario solution, to address these accessibility barriers." And uh, the government of Ontario chose to first focus on five key areas of daily living, that most impact the lives of persons with disabilities. So those being the list on the screen: customer service,information and communications, employment, transportation, those are the first four that are already up. And built-in environment, which is still under development. And um, one that gets a lot of questions. So perhaps, we will turn to customer service standard, and I will talk about that a bit and then Ben will speak to the various elements of the integrated accessibility standards regulation. So the Accessible Customer Service Standard is the first standard with the AODA. And if I could sum it up, I'd say it's about, it's really about culture change. It's really about dialogue. And it's kind of funny to think about government "legislating" or regulating dialogue, but in a way to create the foundation for the standards that we are to follow afterwards. It gives us a basis of which we can create honest authentic point dialogue about accessibility and the nature of disability within the province. And if some of you have taken some of the free online training or perhaps spoken with Christine before or Constance speak, you'll know that a thing that really resonates throughout this standard and throughout the training is best summed up in the form of a question: "How may I help you?" Accessible customer service can be summed up by asking "how may I help you?" and then waiting for the answer. And not making assumptions. And engaging them in conversation about needs. And citizens can provide accessibile customer service to persons with disabilities within our community. And it doesn't need to be much more complicated than that. The work of the customer service standard will be one more slide to get some of the details of it. but it can really be summed up in a few key themes. Now, we have our work cut out for us, there are 360,000 organizations across the province that need to comply with the Customer Service Standard. And the criteria is basically, every organization in the province with one or more employees that provides goods or services to the public or to a third party. That's pretty much, almost every public face in business within the province. But also those businesses that interact with eachother, so they may not have public customers persay. But they have other businesses or non-for-profits as their customers. So it's a pretty far reaching standard, and the work of my team is to get the word out there, and to teach people about it. And to translate the regulation and the legislation into um, plain language but tools and resources, online learning modules, brochures, templates. We all love templates,right? or is that just me working for the government? Um, we create those, and we do it for fun. And it is our goal to bring to the 360,000 organizations across the province, and 60,000 of which, have reached that threshold of 20 or more employees and therefore they need to report to the provincial government, answer a series of ten or so questions about how they are doing with the Accessible Customer Service Standard and on that note, um, I would say, we do receive the question, "How do you count the employees?" "Who counts as an employee?" Volunteers don't. But if you have part-time summer students, during the peak tourist season, they would count as employees. So if at any point during the calendar year, or the previous 12 months you reached 20 plus employees, that means you will need to report on your Accessiblity under the Customer Service Standard. So I will wrap up but going into a little bit more detail about the Customer Service Standard, beyond the "how may I help you." It does have a few requirements and uh, one of which is to set up a policy, a accessible customer service policy that details a few different themes or different areas One of which is that, simply a commitment to provide accessible customer service. Another is a commitment to allow system devices within your organization to accomodate those of priority. Another is to allow service animals into your workplace and areas of your workplace that are normally open to the public. And another is to allow support persons and welcoming support persons to your organization. And in the event that support persons are required to pay an admission fee, you don't have to waive the admission fees, but you have to post that publically. So that individuals with disabilities who are being accompanied by support persons know that in advance, perhaps by posting it on your website, or signage, and so on. There is also a requirement that you train all of your employees and volunteers that deal with the public on your behalf. And we do have free online training for that but it doesn't need to be complex, you don't even need to put someone in front of the computer to have them trained, you can do something as simple as give them a handout and having them read that. So that they understand how the organization welcomes these customers with disabilities. And finally, your organization must also put in place a feedback mechanism so that you can receive feedback from customers with disabilities, and all customers about accessible customer service and how your museum is doing. And with that, I will turn it over to Ben to speak to the integrated regulation. Ben Somers: Thanks Darren. Is this on? Alright, thank you. So as you have heard, Customer Service is really the foundation. What we have done with the snappily and bureaucratically titled Integrated Accessibilities and Regulations is really drilled down in specific areas so that persons can really experience accessibility in key areas of daily life. The Accessibility regulation integrated one has three standards: the information/communication standard, which makes organizations send and receive information communications in ways that are accessible to persons with disabilities. The Employment standard puts in place processes so that organizations can accomodate both applicants and employees throughout the employment life cycle. And lastly, this one probably doesn't apply to you, is the Transportation standard. And this one is all about public transportation like the TTC, transit, etc. So that people can more easily get around the province to doctor's appointments and businesses and what have you. Whenever possible the integrated regulation harmonizes the requirements so that you don't have to have three separate types of training that you have to do to meet each standard. We have given you as much flexibility as possible, so that you can build accessibility incrementally in ways that make sense to your business. So, really unlike the Customer Service Standard, where all of the requirements were, you had to comply with before 2010, or 2012, depending on your organization type. This regulation phases in requirements over time so that you can build accessibility into your daily business and hopefully better succeed. I want to highlight two requirements that came into force January of this year. And they're both to do with emergency. Firstly, all of the organizations in January of this year had to create a Workplace accessibility compliance, in case emergencies happened within the workplace. Also, organizations if they made public plans available, for instance, if you have evacuation plans from your museum, you had to create those in an accessibile way, so that when a person requests them you will be able to provide accessible means of evacuations for people. I must stress, that both of these requirements are about prepared planning, they're not about emergencies in real time. So that they're about accessible information and communications in advance of this situation happening, rather than at the point itself. As Darren mentioned earlier, the Accessible Built Environment Standard is still under development. It is not yet looked at, the government is considering its options. One of the things that the government did say is in 2009, is that this standard will not apply to retro-fit. It's a go forward standard only. That means, if you've got a hundred old museum and there are only steps leading up to the front door. You are not required to install a ramp. If you are under-going extensive renovations, as the ROM recently did, that would be an opportunity to go through the bases. plan for that kind of adjustment but you do not have to retro-fit. The Built Environment Standard is expected to cover two areas of the built environment. Both the buildings themselves and the outdoor public spaces. Things like recreational trails, accessible parking spots, and place spaces. Primary do commit to enacting the standard properly and responsibily and so we're waiting for government action shortly. As Darren said, we're more about the carrot than the stick. And what I want to achieve very quickly about now, is our approach to compliance and how we will help the organizations understand their obligations, so that we're putting in place the best path for you to be successful with accessibility. We recognize that accessibility is only going to be as good as the organization's ability to implement it. So as you can see, on the right hand side of the screen a great deal of our support and help with organizations is focused on systems. Events, such as these that Darren's team most often goes out on,. 238 00:19:29,877 --> 00:19:33,972 Is a really key venue for us, to be able to spread the word. We also have partnerships with the organizations, usually umbrella organizations. That we are really able to connect with their membership and spread the word on our behalf. So then, um, accessibility becomes the daily message for most organizations in the province. In this way we are hoping to reach out to 360,000 organizations. We also have a couple of call centers around the province and I will give you a number toward the end of this presentation. If you ever got any problems, concerns about how to comply on the final report. Please phone the number, and they will be people on the end to be able to help you out. Moving through to the third and fourth segments of this chart, when organizations reach the third segment of this chart, when organizations file reports. If we have determined that there has been an instance of non-compliance, our call centers and compliance officers will connect with organizations and really help them improve their behaviour so that we can turn those "no's" into "yeses". Again, it's another example of how the province is committed to helping organizations really achieve accessibility in a meaningful way. If after all of these efforts have been exhausted, and the organization still not compliant, then the last segment of this chart really speaks to our approach to inspections and enforcement. We have under the AODA, the authority to assume orders of penalties. For us to be a contravention of the act of the legislation. We have risk free framework that we apply in every instance. So that we are really looking at looking to assist and improve organizations, before we have to enforce the requirements. But of course, that option is available to us. As I said, I just wanted to point out a couple of helpful tips for you. The Ontario.ca/accessON website is a great resource for you. On here you will find tips, information and other resources to help out all of the organizations meet the regulation's requirements. Two of the things that are gradually being placed on this website, are plain language guidelines, and how-to guidelines. Plain language guidelines are an, they basically de-mystify the regulation. So you don't have to be a lawyer to understand what you need to do. It's in French and English and gives you the real plain language interpretation of the requirement. Darren's job is constantly evolving and putting out materials that are of a how-to nature. So, I'm sure some of the conversations that you had earlier touched on this kind of, on this subject. But Darren's team are really committed to producing scenarios, best-case scenarios, so that you can really figure out how accessibility makes sense in practical situations. They are coming, and hopefully we will have news for you on their complete launch on Thursday, as well. There's the number for you, we can email this to everybody after the presentation so that you have it at home, if you need to read it with a screen reader, you will have it on the computer. And I just want to end on kind of an aspirational note, and talk about what the accessibile museum might look like in 2025. I know that we have been in some museums across the province, so many of you are already doing this, and are a great list of practices that you can share I'm sure very proudly. But touch exhibits where persons with disabilities can reach out and tactile and feel the exhibit and collections is really interesting and innovative way to get everybody included in the museum experience. Having larger format pamphlets on hand, or easily able to be emailed to a person so that they can read it on their Blackberry or iPhone or whatever. Braille signage where appropriate, and captionned videos next to exhibitions. None of these are required in the regulation as I said before, the regulation provides you flexibility to meet accessibility and bring access to your museum, but here are some really great ways that museums can be accessible by 2025. I know I have been pretty quick, I know I did not talk in depth about the regulation but as so much of the time. So if you have specific questions, either Darren or I will be really happy to answer those. Thank you.