ODA Committee Update
dated December 16, 2002
posted Dec. 28, 2002

ONTARIANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT COMMITTEE UPDATE ODA Committee's Brief to Government's Consultation on Barrier-Free Standards for Ontario Government Buildings December 16, 2002 SUMMARY The Ontarians with Disabilities Act Committee has submitted a brief to the Ontario Realty Corporation, in connection with its public consultation on barrier-free design guidelines for Ontario Government buildings. We set out the five-page brief below. You will recall that we encouraged ODA supporters to participate in this public consultation. Our brief makes it clear that we are not attempting to duplicate the input that individuals and organizations have contributed. Our aim in this brief is to make general recommendations which supplement others' input. We make recommendations in this brief on the contents of the guidelines, the steps needed to develop these guidelines and to consult effectively with the disability community, and on the need to monitor the implementation of these guidelines. We do not include the attachments and enclosures. If you want to see those, either visit the ODA Committee website in a few days, or email us at: oda@odacommittee.net Send us your feedback on this brief at the email address above. ***** To: The Ontario Realty Corporation Attention Marlene Budhram, Program Analyst Via email: marlene.budhram@orc.gov.on.ca BRIEF OF THE ONTARIANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT COMMITTEE TO THE ONTARIO REALTY CORPORATION CONSULTATION ON BARRIER-FREE DESIGN STANDARDS FOR ONTARIO GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS December 15, 2002 INTRODUCTION The Ontarians with Disabilities Act Committee welcomes this opportunity to give its input into the Ontario Realty Corporation's current consultation, under the Ontarians with Disabilities Act 2001, into barrier-free design standards for Ontario Government buildings and facilities. The ODA Committee is a province-wide, grassroots, voluntary, non- partisan coalition of individuals and over 100 community organizations organized in 23 regions of Ontario. Founded in late 1994, we have united to achieve a barrier-free Ontario for all persons with disabilities through the prompt passage and effective implementation of a strong, effective Ontarians with Disabilities Act. We include over 100 organizational members and many individual members, both with and without disabilities. Our membership includes people of all ages, and includes many parents of children with disabilities. Our organizational members are listed on our website. We have extensive experience and expertise with the wide range of disabilities. Through our volunteer efforts we have brought our message to the Ontario Government, the opposition parties, the public and the media. Our activities are amply documented on our website. We led the charge for the enactment of a strong and effective ODA. We now lead the charge to get the current legislation promptly and effectively implemented, monitored, and improved where needed. We commend the Ontario Realty Corporation (O.R.C.) for conducting this consultation. We do not wish to duplicate the efforts of our members and others who have given you their input. Rather, we wish to offer some more general recommendations and resources to help you in your work in developing strong and effective barrier-free guidelines for Ontario Government buildings. We would be delighted to do whatever we can to help you achieve success in your activity in this area. Please contact us if we can provide anything further to help. OUR RECOMMENDATIONS (A) CONTENTS OF YOUR BARRIER-FREE GOVERNMENT BUILDING GUIDELINES 1. We recommend that the guidelines you develop for barrier-free Ontario Government buildings and facilities clearly state that their aim is to achieve a barrier-free Ontario, including a barrier-free Ontario Government, as soon as reasonably possible. The goal of merely "improving access" is too weak, and could achieve little for us. We note that at the time the ODA bill was before the Legislature last year, then Citizenship Minister Cam Jackson, who sponsored this bill, committed that the Ontario Government should be in compliance within five years. 2. We recommend that you ensure that your guidelines meet fully the high standards for accessibility required by the Ontario Human Rights Code, and required by the 11 principles for the ODA which the Legislature unanimously passed by a resolution on October 29, 1998. They should also live up to the Ontario Government's 13 commitments for the ODA, which it made in the fall of 2001. We set out the Legislature's October 29, 1998 resolution and the Government's Fall 2001 13 commitments below. For assistance regarding the standards of the Ontario Human Rights Code, you should consult the OHRC's excellent new policy guidelines on the duty to accommodate persons with disabilities, at: http://www.ohrc.on.ca We also recommend that you consult directly with the Ontario Human Rights Commission itself. We all wish to avoid a multiplicity of human rights complaints. If your guidelines ensure that Ontario Government facilities comply with the requirements of the Ontario Human Rights Code, then the need to litigate barriers one at a time will be reduced, to the benefit of all. 3. We recommend that you design your guidelines to apply not only to newly-acqu but to existing ones as well, even if they are not slated for renovation. Whether or not the ODA 2001 requires the Ontario Government to develop guidelines over pre-existing Ontario Government buildings that are not slated for renovation, is to us beside the point. It is not sufficient for only newly-acquired and newly-renovated Ontario Government buildings and facilities to become properly accessible, to become barrier-free, if the Ontario Government is to live up to its Fall 2001 commitments to make Ontario a barrier-free province, and to lead by example. The information you will receive during your current consultation would equally be useful for guidelines on Ontario Government buildings that are not slated for renovation. Therefore, we urge that to avoid the wasteful need to duplicate this work later, you ensure that your guidelines cover the entire field now, including buildings that are not slated for renovation. 4. We recommend that you ensure that the guidelines you develop concerning barrier-free design of Ontario Government buildings and facilities can readily be adopted and used by organizations outside the Ontario Government. While the guidelines you are now developing are intended only for Ontario Government buildings and facilities, it would be helpful to all organizations seeking to become barrier- free to be able to benefit from your efforts. We therefore ask that you develop guidelines which, as much as possible, could be used by other public sector and private sector organizations outside the formal structure of the Ontario Government if they wish. We also ask you to make your guidelines broadly available at no charge, so others interested in this area can make use of them. We know, for example, that municipalities and their Accessibility Advisory Committees will welcome useful guidelines in this area. 5. We recommend that you ensure that your guidelines fully exceed the current accessibility requirements of the Ontario Building Code. It is open to you under the ODA 2001 to develop barrier-free standards that exceed the insufficient requirements of the Ontario Building Code. At present, too many companies and organizations merely seek to meet the Building Code's inadequate requirements. They thereby create new barriers against persons with disabilities. (B) PROCESS FOR DEVELOPING YOUR GUIDELINES AND FOR CONSULTING 6. We recommend that in developing your barrier-free guidelines, you fully review resources developed to date in connection with the ODA and related initiatives. In separate emails we will forward two of these resources to you, namely: (1) The ODA Committee's comprehensive 1998 brief to the Ontario Legislature, providing our proposed blueprint for the ODA. Included with that brief, and especially helpful for you, is its Appendix 1, a 50-page inventory of barriers that ODA supporters reported to us over a three-year period during which we gathered this information. (2) The ODA Committee's 2002 brief to the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, on reforming the accessibility requirements in the Ontario Building Code. We also would direct you to two additional important sources of information in Ontario. When the Ontario Government tabled its ODA bill in the Ontario Legislature last year, in response to our call for public hearings, A Standing Committee of the Legislature held several days of public hearings. Despite a number of barriers making it hard to prepare and participate, many individuals and disability organizations with great expertise in this area made excellent presentations and submitted excellent briefs. We urge you to review all of these, to see what was submitted that would assist you. This will also help you identify people and organizations with expertise and an interest in this area. As our 2002 brief on the Building Code details, you can see all the presentations before the Standing Committee on our website. It also details how you can get all the briefs submitted on the ODA bill. If you want us to email you the briefs which we have in electronic form, contact us. We would be delighted to help. We also encourage you to obtain from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing all the briefs and other submissions they received earlier this year, on reforming the Building Code's accessibility requirements. We regret that the Ontario Government did not act on those submissions when it subsequently drafted and passed the most comprehensive reform of the Ontario Building Code in decades, after the Government had asked the disability community to take the time and effort to prepare and provide input on the issue of building accessibility. However, we hope that you will obtain and make use of that work product. 7. To consult effectively with persons with disabilities, we recommend that the O.R.C. first collect together existing barrier- free building/facilities standards that have been developed in Ontario, elsewhere in Canada, in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world. Then, it would be helpful if the O.R.C. could make that material public and synthesize these materials into a document which sets out options in important areas. The O.R.C. could then consult with the disability community and other stake-holders on the choices from among these options. You might wish to co-ordinate such efforts with the Accessibility Directorate of the Ministry of Citizenship, and with the staff at the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing who deal with Building Code issues, to avoid duplication of effort. This is most likely to aid you in getting the most useful feedback. It will give the community the best chance for meaningful input. It would then be helpful if you could publicize a draft of your proposed guidelines on barrier-free standards for Ontario Government buildings and facilities for comment by the community, before they are finalized. We understand that sometimes Government does not publicize a document until it gets formal approval within Government. This can make it very difficult to make changes based on public input afterwards, since all the Government decisions have already been made. We encourage you to go about this in a way that lets one and all look at the product well enough before it is finalized, to ensure a chance for true and meaningful input. This will allow us to be the most helpful to you. 8. We recommend that you use as many avenues as possible to publicize your requests for input. The only avenue we heard about your current consultation was via your website and email postings. You may have circulated your announcement in other ways. However, we did not receive such. In fact, we learned of your consultation only when one of our members forwarded an email message to us about it. We appear not to be on your distribution list. We would appreciate being added to it. We ourselves make heavy use of the internet, due to our lack of external funding. However, we are keenly aware that many, including many persons with disabilities, do not have access to the internet. Of those who do use the internet, some may not have heard about your consultation. For our part, when we heard about your consultation, we did our best to publicize it ourselves and to encourage others to participate. We believe that it is important to do what we all can to reach everyone. You have the advantage of the Government's resources. We encourage you to do what you can in this regard. We invite the O.R.C. to notify us of all future developments in this area, and send us any and all announcements that it makes available to the public. We would be pleased to help you where feasible, by ensuring that those announcements get widely circulated to many interested people and organizations. We have a good track record of getting word out widely and fast on breaking- developments concerning the ODA. We should also alert you that we received word that some had concerns and difficulties, when trying to complete your on-line survey. We cannot comment on these, beyond alerting you to this, as we understand you have heard from at least one individual, and to ask you to look into this. 9. We encourage you to ensure that your consultation process extends to the seniors' community. Disability issues substantially affect seniors. It is important that your guidelines meet their needs. (C) MEASURING YOUR GUIDELINES' EFFECTIVENESS 10. The ultimate measure of the effectiveness of your forthcoming guidelines on barrier-free Ontario Government buildings will be the practical experience of persons with disabilities, who actually try to use Ontario Government facilities. Thus, as an important step in this process, we recommend that you have individuals with disabilities, who are independent of the Ontario Government, test their effectiveness by visiting and auditing Government facilities purporting to comply with your new guidelines, once they are in draft form. This can help you and us see whether the draft guidelines are sufficient. It will also be vital to monitor generally, to ascertain how much the Ontario Government complies with these guidelines, once they are developed. CONCLUSION Please let us know what we can do to be of further help to you in this work. Background Links Making Ontario Open For People With Disabilities: A Blueprint For A Strong And Effective Ontarians With Disabilities Act Submitted to the Ontario Legislature by the Ontarians with Disabilities Act Committee dd April 22, 1998 ODA Committee Brief To Ontario Government On Reform To Disability Access Provisions Of The Ontario Building Code dd Feb 27, 2002 Ontario Legislature's Second Resolution (adopting the 11 principles) on the Ontarians with Disabilities Act dd Oct 29, 1998 Conservative Government's 13 Commitments to Ontarians With Disabilities

 

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Last updated December 28, 2002