{"id":39197,"date":"2016-05-30T11:05:00","date_gmt":"2016-05-30T15:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=39197"},"modified":"2016-05-31T14:59:45","modified_gmt":"2016-05-31T18:59:45","slug":"understanding-of-accessibility-continues-to-thrive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2016\/05\/understanding-of-accessibility-continues-to-thrive\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding of accessibility continues to thrive"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor’s Note: Access Awareness Week is a yearly celebration to highlight the importance of accessibility and the many ways that it impacts our lives. Each day of this week we will\u00a0feature an\u00a0article looking at\u00a0accessibility in its many forms.<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s Access Awareness Week in Ontario\u00a0and Brock University continues to keep pace with new concepts that surround inclusion, pedagogy, employment and community.<\/p>\n

A shift is occurring on campus where\u00a0a greater understanding of accessibility and its role in\u00a0human rights is being recognized. Everyone on campus is learning the importance of human rights as they apply to accessibility and ultimately equality, said Brock’s Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Co-ordinator Chris Lytle.<\/span><\/p>\n

Society’s understanding\u00a0of the principles that guide accessibility have been a long time coming.\u00a0Prior to the development of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities there was international pressure asserted by disabled people\u2019s organizations for the development and implementation of a human rights tool that would promote inclusion across all sectors of life.\u00a0This global pressure resulted in the development and ratification of the\u00a0UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities that has now been adopted in over a 120 countries.<\/p>\n

Canada ratified the UN CRPD in 2010, and having done so, added what can be considered an interpretive tool to\u00a0its already existing human rights framework. Simply put, the UN CRPD can provide a positive approach to the promotion of people with disabilities in areas where systemic barriers have traditionally excluded them.<\/p>\n

As an example, Canada could potentially use this disability and human rights lens to evolve how all citizens are viewed with regards to articles such as Equal Recognition Before the Law (Art 12), or Access to Justice (Art 13), and among others, how people with disabilities are excluded from Work and Employment (Art 27).<\/p>\n

The principles that form the convention\u2019s human rights framework can guide the redevelopment or creation of either existing or new policy to be inclusive of people with disabilities. Among others, the principles include such themes as respect for dignity, non-discrimination, participation and inclusion, respect for difference, equality of opportunity, and accessibility.<\/p>\n

In terms of Canada\u2019s existing framework, which is comprised of the\u00a0Charter of Rights and Freedoms<\/a>\u00a0(Sec 15), Provincial and Territorial\u00a0Human Rights Codes\u00a0and the current Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act\u00a0(AODA), people with disabilities who live in Ontario have a multi-tiered mechanism already in place. The principles that are found in the UN CRPD are consistent with those found in the Ontario\u00a0Human Rights Code<\/a>\u00a0(OHRC)\u00a0that has primacy over the\u00a0Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The AODA does not override any section of the OHRC\u00a0but the code and the act work together to create a disability-specific mechanism that takes to tasks systemic barriers that traditionally excluded people with disabilities from services and employment. It could be said that it is because of the framework of human rights principles that employers and consultants alike are able to assess whether public and private policy regarding employment is either a barrier or whether it is inclusive of people with disabilities. To view how people are treated through a human rights lens means using the above mentioned principles, as benchmarks to evaluate the inclusive nature of, say, employment and recruitment systems or customer service.<\/p>\n

In Ontario we are fortunate to have the\u00a0Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act\u00a0that does this work for us. Wherever the AODA is used to create an inclusive environment, it can be seen as using a human rights lens to decipher whether structures need adjusting.<\/p>\n

\u2022 This article was written by Chris Lytle and Alana Sharpe<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s Access Awareness Week in Canada and Brock University continues to keep pace with new concepts that surround inclusion, pedagogy, employment and community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39206,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[4133,2239,2981,4132],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39197"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39197"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39208,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39197\/revisions\/39208"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}