Speaker 1: Broadcast media is pervasive in every part of our life. And if you think about how much you consume, how much you stream, how much you watch, how much you interact, the idea of being cut off from that or restricted from that is awful.

Speaker 2: I would be waxing on about accessibility and then Hilary one day said, let's do a project together about accessibility. And then we went to a conference where we heard about the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund grant. And we turned and looked at each other and said, we're going to get that, and we did.

Speaker 3: And so we started building the Making Accessible Media website, we started making the course that is going to be available to faculty, it's going to be available to students, it's going to be available to anyone out in the world. The course focuses on making audio content accessible, video content accessible, printed materials such as accessible PDFs, accessible Word documents, anything you'd be communicating with, we're focusing on making it more accessible.

Speaker 4: You know, seeing it come together bit by bit is a very rewarding and satisfying experience and creatively very challenging too.

Speaker 3: Yeah, the team is really important because everyone has a different area of expertise. So as a graphic designer, I think about the visuals and how someone who can't see will approach my design, where Leigh, for example, as a web developer thinks about it in a totally different way. The content creators are thinking about it from a plain language perspective and making sure that they're writing in a way that's accessible. So everyone on the team has this different approach that altogether creates a really inclusive design.

Speaker 5: As a journalist, my goal is to present something and have people consume it. If I don't make stuff accessible, then I'm saying, hey, you guys over there, you can't consume my stuff, I don't want you to, sorry. Whereas if I make it accessible, I'm saying, yes, you're just like anybody else, whether you have these specific issues or not, or these conditions or not, come read my stories.

Speaker 4: Well, we're just sort of breaking the ice in terms of realizing there's a lot of people who have not been able to offer their full talents because they can't realize the full potential of what they're watching or listening to or delving into in terms of media.

Speaker 6: We have all this technology, we have a very large mass media industry that is well-funded, and yet we can't seem to meet simple, core, basic principles of accessibility like closed captioning.

Speaker 2: When you don't know something, it seems really hard. It seems impossible to do. How am I going to caption a video? It takes too long. I don't know what to do. But as soon as you learn how to do it, it just is, and it just becomes part of what you do and who you are and how you make your media and how you create your content. Part of this course, or what this course is about, is delivering that material and showing people how to do it, why you do it, and then you know how to do it, and then it just becomes who you are. It really becomes part of your humanness.

Speaker 6: We know we can get content out. Now can we get content out accurately and correctly for all to view and to see and to experience and to hear? I mean, the key word here is accessible, is making more people, enabling more people to be involved with experiences. So the delivery of content can now be truly enjoyed by multiple millions, if not tens of millions of people.

Speaker 4: Right, and all those people are going to be able to bring their full measure of talent to whatever they're involved in because we're able to make things more accessible.

Speaker 1: So it's vital and important that as we move towards a more inclusive society, that we not only make our media more inclusive, but we also include a mindset or a world view about inclusivity so that we can reflect those stories back to ourselves and keep that on record as part of the story of Canada, the story of where we are in this world.

Speaker 7: What's really exciting about this project is the whole idea of change. Change we can do within, with curriculum and how we teach students, but also the change agents that we're going to create going out to work in broadcast industry.

Speaker 8: And so for us, what we hope in this course is that people, our students and anyone else who wants to use the course, will create inclusive content from the very first phase of development. You think of an idea and then inclusivity is part of that from the start.

Speaker 9: This is work that will change attitudes, will change minds. Taking a leadership stance in these areas is something that makes me feel really proud. And the fact that we are graduating or we're forming professionals that will have that accessibility and usability thinking first, I think will really make a difference in terms of the way that Canada and Ontario broadcast their media.

Speaker 4: So I hope the long-term benefit of the course, for example, is that we don't notice the differences between people. That we don't automatically assume things because we see a disability or see someone with a challenge. We assume that they will be successful. We assume that they will be able to put forth their greatest effort like any student in college, for example, and move forward.

Speaker 5: That's kind of what I'm doing here, just trying to pursue something that I find is really important in life. If we don't have news, we don't know what's going on. So I hope that's what I can do, do one day, just be the guy in front of this beautiful camera, telling the truth, finding out what's happening, sharing it with my lovely Canadians. Be a great one, hopefully.