Ensuring Accessibility at McMaster: A Comprehensive Guide for Inclusivity (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Accessibility at McMaster is about ensuring equality of opportunity for all members of the campus community, including faculty, students, staff, and volunteers. Accessibility is a proactive process that requires each and every one of us to consider the types of barriers that exist in our environments and find ways to eliminate them. This means that we all have a role to play in creating a more inclusive campus community. The Accessibility website is the central portal that houses all of the information you need to identify what you can do to ensure greater accessibility at McMaster. This accessibility hub includes such tools as Census access for conversion of documents into accessible formats Checklists for creating accessible events Tools for creating accessible documents Tools for accessible PowerPoint Wave checker for website accessibility And closed captioning for videos Barriers to accessibility come in all shapes and sizes. The obvious barriers include physical barriers like stairwells without ramps or publicly available elevators. But the most common barriers experienced by persons living with disabilities are embedded into our perspectives, practices, or tucked away in our policies and procedures. For example, in order for the information on the McMaster website and learning management systems to be accessible to individuals using screen readers or other assistive technology, accessibility web standards need to be proactively integrated into the design and maintenance of every website and content management system on campus. This principle of being proactive about accessibility applies across the board. Accessibility does not happen because we want it to happen. It requires the campus community to be deliberate and proactive about establishing and maintaining policies and procedures to ensure that accessibility is a standard that is applied and upheld across the university. The work of accessibility at McMaster is guided by the McMaster Accessibility Council, or MAC, a body reporting to the president of the university comprised of senior administrators and consultants who provide subject matter expertise to the group. MAC is responsible for ensuring the university's adherence to the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, or the AODA. The AODA is an Ontario-wide law that provides direction to organizations like McMaster on how to be accessible. The AODA is made up of the Integrated Accessibility Standard Regulation and is comprised of five standards including information and communication, employment, transportation, design of public spaces, and customer service. Training on the AODA is a requirement for all instructors, students, staff and volunteers at McMaster. This video is part of a suite of training tools to help inform the campus community about its obligations in creating a more accessible McMaster University. The university is also bound by the Ontario Human Rights Code, which provides protection from harassment or discrimination on the basis of one or more of the prohibited grounds of discrimination, including disability. The McMaster Discrimination, Harassment, Prevention and Response Policy provides recourse for any member of the McMaster community who has been subject to discrimination or harassment. Once this video is complete, please review the information sheets on the accessibility standards and the relevant McMaster policies to help inform your practice in our collective and your individual accessibility obligations at McMaster. These information sheets include the McMaster Accessibility Policy, the McMaster Discrimination, Harassment and Sexual Harassment, Prevention and Response Policy, the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act 2005, the Integrated Accessibility Standards Regulation.

Speaker 2: For more information on how you can promote accessibility, visit us at www.accessibility.mcmaster.ca or email access at mcmaster.ca or you can call us at 905-525-9140, extension 24644. For AODA and for human rights code core support, email aoda.mcmaster.ca. For more general information from the Equity and Inclusion Office, visit equity.mcmaster.ca.