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These are the stories of persons with disabilities who have found and thrived in fulfilling work and of the workplace leaders with the confidence, capacity and knowhow to employ and mentor them.
I'd like to share a bit of my career story with you and and some of my learnings and and reflections which hopefully will resonate with you. So, first a little bit more about me. Uh I've been an academic researcher for 25 years, a post-secary educator for the same amount of time. um an inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility professional for 20 years, a founder and leader in the discipline of accessibility and STEM for 15 years, a research strategist and administrator for the past 10, and a nonprofit executive for the last five. So, those of you who are relying on your eyesight, I'm older than I look. For those of you who are relying on audio, I'm younger than I sound.

What that tells you is is even when they're functioning, our senses don't always tell us everything about our world. The idea project is is all about translating innovation for workplace for workers with disabilities into workplaces. Uh as a social innovation laboratory, we are all about the most basic definition of what we call in the sciences translational research. Scaling from pilot to process. But I do think it's important just settle for a moment on the concept that not all persons with disabilities have the same set of experiences. our lived experiences, our interacting social identities, intersecting social identities, whether we're born with disabilities or we acquire them later in life, whether we identify as living with multiple disabilities, all of those play a substantial role in in shaping how we interact with the world and how the world interacts with us. And at CNIB research, my my team spends its time understanding both the personal and systemic aspects of that lived experience and that interaction between the person and the systems of society is at the center of our research philosophy. A well-intentioned system can still fail a person because of a lack of understanding of that interaction. I have a PhD. The employment rate of persons who are blind or partially sighted with PhDs is 55%. The employment rate of a high school dropout who does not identify as living with a disability in this country is 60%. I'm going to put that another way. I'm less employable than my neighborhood high school dropout. Right? And and so so when when we think about this space, we we think usually that education begets employment. And that that's true up to a certain point. Um and uh and and so so the experiences that all of us have uh really come from that space of who we are and and and what what spaces do we live in and what are the systems that we uh interact with in in terms of um in terms of the things that we want to do in our life today. I could tell you the story of of the the uh the blind first generation immigrant not born in Canada uh science prodigy the the one who started high school when he was 10 and post-secary when he was 15. the one who wasn't diagnosed with congenital cataracts until he was 10 months of age and and lives with neurological changes to his brain because his um his sight loss was not uh was not identified until the point after his visual cortex has started to do stuff. I I could tell you that you speaking with a real life Sheldon Cooper. I could share the message that anyone with a disability can succeed in the workplace. And you know what? Those are all true stories. Every last one. Those are powerful messages. Every last one. But I want to tell you the story behind the story. And I want to share with you the biases and attitudes that we need to counter and remove in order to achieve the goals of this important work that we're doing together over the next six years. My biography says I'm the world's first congenally blind geneticist. And that is empirically true, but it's not what I set out to be. One of my first genetics profs said to me on the first day of class, "Wow, you're the first blind geneticist I've ever heard of." Now, I thought to myself, "No, that that can't be right." And I did what any good scientist would do. I sought the evidence. Turned out she was actually right. Um, I wanted to be a science teacher. In fact, my mother was a science teacher. My older sister was trained to be a science teacher. My, oddly enough, my wife was trained to be a science teacher. Um, you could argue that that that runs in the family. Um, I certainly wanted to be the first to do something or learn something in my field. I mean, science, after all, is a great place for somebody to be if we want to be explorers of knowledge or to discover or learn something new. But it was never in my mind to be the first blind person to do it. I've claimed that identity now, just as for the Marvel fans in the audience, Tony Stark is Iron Man. I am the world's first congenity blind geneticist. But that identity comes with a price. It comes with several, in fact. First, the price of misunderstanding. People that I know who know me well have misunderstood why I chose my career path. And in misunderstanding that have also misunderstood or misrepresented me as a person, as an individual. Second, the price of trailblazing. Nobody did it before me. So there were no role models, no precedents, no examples, no sponsors, no community. Being the first, I've discovered, is very, very lonely. Being the only as in the only person with a disability in your space is also very isolating. This is one of the reasons I choose to spend a lot of professional and personal time on mentorship and sponsorship as well as on capacity building in the space of accessible and inclusive research. Loneliness and isolation in our professional and personal lives is a very hard thing and in my mind not to be propagated to the next generation. Third, the price of disbelief. Well, you can't be a scientist with a disability was a common refrain. The word can't was used in the context of capability, in the context of permissiveness or lack thereof, and in the context of disbelief, and sometimes all three at the same time. English is such a wonderful language. Even today, I have a mentee who started their relationship with me by asking, "How did you navigate the transition away from science to do what you do now?" Asking me essentially how I left a discipline and skill set that I actually haven't left. But I was born in and grew up in a part of the world where the supports and services we take for granted in Canada for persons with disabilities, leaving aside whether those services work or not or effective or not, they just did not exist. And they still don't exist to this day. That meant no access to a public school education for me while I was growing up. No access to assist of technology, no access to disability support, no access to a network for me, my parents, or my siblings. But it also meant no one to gatekeep or to tell us that something was possible or not possible. And within this lack of systemic or personal support came an opportunity. The opportunity to try and to succeed or not without anyone biasing my parents or myself one way or the other. Now I don't wish growing up with a lack of support on frankly anybody. But I do wonder how to capture that opportunity to try within a support system that can be unintentionally restrictive. Finally, there is the price of cognitive load and mental health. The toll that I experience being a scientist and a researcher in a system that frankly doesn't think I should be here and is itself unfriendly to persons with disabilities as practitioners of the research craft. That's something that's been there from day one. And it's also something that I wasn't anticipating, couldn't prepare for, and can only live with each day. We don't talk enough about the extra work, in gigantic air quotes, that persons with disabilities undertake to live our lives and participate in society and the little points of advocacy or education that we do multiple times a day, nor about the toll that these effects take. Everyone's energy will everyone's bucket is finite and needs replenishment. And even if we all have the same energy reserves, I as a person with low vision have to spend that energy that much more and that much more quickly on a daily basis, whether is at work or in my community. When we think about accessibility for persons with disabilities in the workplace, often we focus on the transactional nature of the work, accommodations, a word by the way, which I actively loathe, uh toolkits, resources, checklists, and mediating the relationship between employer and worker. And yeah, those are absolutely important. They help us get jobs. But I say, yeah, so too are the policies, the practices, and the systems of the workplace, the attitudes and the biases of our co-workers and our managers and our own sense of internalized abelism. These two must be addressed in our work, and addressing them collectively will ensure a truly inclusive workplace for us all.

These are the stories of persons with disabilities who have found and thrived in fulfilling work and of the workplace leaders with the confidence, capacity and knowhow to employ and mentor them.
I'd like to share a bit of my career story with you and and some of my learnings and and reflections which hopefully will resonate with you. So, first a little bit more about me. Uh I've been an academic researcher for 25 years, a post-secary educator for the same amount of time. um an inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility professional for 20 years, a founder and leader in the discipline of accessibility and STEM for 15 years, a research strategist and administrator for the past 10, and a nonprofit executive for the last five. So, those of you who are relying on your eyesight, I'm older than I look. For those of you who are relying on audio, I'm younger than I sound.

What that tells you is is even when they're functioning, our senses don't always tell us everything about our world. The idea project is is all about translating innovation for workplace for workers with disabilities into workplaces. Uh as a social innovation laboratory, we are all about the most basic definition of what we call in the sciences translational research. Scaling from pilot to process. But I do think it's important just settle for a moment on the concept that not all persons with disabilities have the same set of experiences. our lived experiences, our interacting social identities, intersecting social identities, whether we're born with disabilities or we acquire them later in life, whether we identify as living with multiple disabilities, all of those play a substantial role in in shaping how we interact with the world and how the world interacts with us. And at CNIB research, my my team spends its time understanding both the personal and systemic aspects of that lived experience and that interaction between the person and the systems of society is at the center of our research philosophy. A well-intentioned system can still fail a person because of a lack of understanding of that interaction. I have a PhD. The employment rate of persons who are blind or partially sighted with PhDs is 55%. The employment rate of a high school dropout who does not identify as living with a disability in this country is 60%. I'm going to put that another way. I'm less employable than my neighborhood high school dropout. Right? And and so so when when we think about this space, we we think usually that education begets employment. And that that's true up to a certain point. Um and uh and and so so the experiences that all of us have uh really come from that space of who we are and and and what what spaces do we live in and what are the systems that we uh interact with in in terms of um in terms of the things that we want to do in our life today. I could tell you the story of of the the uh the blind first generation immigrant not born in Canada uh science prodigy the the one who started high school when he was 10 and post-secary when he was 15. the one who wasn't diagnosed with congenital cataracts until he was 10 months of age and and lives with neurological changes to his brain because his um his sight loss was not uh was not identified until the point after his visual cortex has started to do stuff. I I could tell you that you speaking with a real life Sheldon Cooper. I could share the message that anyone with a disability can succeed in the workplace. And you know what? Those are all true stories. Every last one. Those are powerful messages. Every last one. But I want to tell you the story behind the story. And I want to share with you the biases and attitudes that we need to counter and remove in order to achieve the goals of this important work that we're doing together over the next six years. My biography says I'm the world's first congenally blind geneticist. And that is empirically true, but it's not what I set out to be. One of my first genetics profs said to me on the first day of class, "Wow, you're the first blind geneticist I've ever heard of." Now, I thought to myself, "No, that that can't be right." And I did what any good scientist would do. I sought the evidence. Turned out she was actually right. Um, I wanted to be a science teacher. In fact, my mother was a science teacher. My older sister was trained to be a science teacher. My, oddly enough, my wife was trained to be a science teacher. Um, you could argue that that that runs in the family. Um, I certainly wanted to be the first to do something or learn something in my field. I mean, science, after all, is a great place for somebody to be if we want to be explorers of knowledge or to discover or learn something new. But it was never in my mind to be the first blind person to do it. I've claimed that identity now, just as for the Marvel fans in the audience, Tony Stark is Iron Man. I am the world's first congenity blind geneticist. But that identity comes with a price. It comes with several, in fact. First, the price of misunderstanding. People that I know who know me well have misunderstood why I chose my career path. And in misunderstanding that have also misunderstood or misrepresented me as a person, as an individual. Second, the price of trailblazing. Nobody did it before me. So there were no role models, no precedents, no examples, no sponsors, no community. Being the first, I've discovered, is very, very lonely. Being the only as in the only person with a disability in your space is also very isolating. This is one of the reasons I choose to spend a lot of professional and personal time on mentorship and sponsorship as well as on capacity building in the space of accessible and inclusive research. Loneliness and isolation in our professional and personal lives is a very hard thing and in my mind not to be propagated to the next generation. Third, the price of disbelief. Well, you can't be a scientist with a disability was a common refrain. The word can't was used in the context of capability, in the context of permissiveness or lack thereof, and in the context of disbelief, and sometimes all three at the same time. English is such a wonderful language. Even today, I have a mentee who started their relationship with me by asking, "How did you navigate the transition away from science to do what you do now?" Asking me essentially how I left a discipline and skill set that I actually haven't left. But I was born in and grew up in a part of the world where the supports and services we take for granted in Canada for persons with disabilities, leaving aside whether those services work or not or effective or not, they just did not exist. And they still don't exist to this day. That meant no access to a public school education for me while I was growing up. No access to assist of technology, no access to disability support, no access to a network for me, my parents, or my siblings. But it also meant no one to gatekeep or to tell us that something was possible or not possible. And within this lack of systemic or personal support came an opportunity. The opportunity to try and to succeed or not without anyone biasing my parents or myself one way or the other. Now I don't wish growing up with a lack of support on frankly anybody. But I do wonder how to capture that opportunity to try within a support system that can be unintentionally restrictive. Finally, there is the price of cognitive load and mental health. The toll that I experience being a scientist and a researcher in a system that frankly doesn't think I should be here and is itself unfriendly to persons with disabilities as practitioners of the research craft. That's something that's been there from day one. And it's also something that I wasn't anticipating, couldn't prepare for, and can only live with each day. We don't talk enough about the extra work, in gigantic air quotes, that persons with disabilities undertake to live our lives and participate in society and the little points of advocacy or education that we do multiple times a day, nor about the toll that these effects take. Everyone's energy will everyone's bucket is finite and needs replenishment. And even if we all have the same energy reserves, I as a person with low vision have to spend that energy that much more and that much more quickly on a daily basis, whether is at work or in my community. When we think about accessibility for persons with disabilities in the workplace, often we focus on the transactional nature of the work, accommodations, a word by the way, which I actively loathe, uh toolkits, resources, checklists, and mediating the relationship between employer and worker. And yeah, those are absolutely important. They help us get jobs. But I say, yeah, so too are the policies, the practices, and the systems of the workplace, the attitudes and the biases of our co-workers and our managers and our own sense of internalized abelism. These two must be addressed in our work, and addressing them collectively will ensure a truly inclusive workplace for us all.

Fantastic.

Your exceptions. Are you going? Oh, there we go. Okay.

Just making sure.

Yeah.

So I'm going to start this one a little bit differently, just kind of giving a background spiel on idea in case we end up using any of

Or not idea of the journeys in case we end up using the recording at all or any form.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, for sure.

So welcome, Jackie. Thanks for joining us for Journeys to Inclusion.

These are the stories of persons with disabilities who have found and thrived in fulfilling work.

and of the workplace leaders, the confidence, capacity, and know-how.

to employ and mentor them.

These stories can be powerful tools for creative, inclusive workplaces.

The Journeys to Inclusion project provides real-world examples of how evidence-based solutions

can be put into practice in different contexts.

They also put a human face to the challenges and rewards of building inclusive workplaces.

And we're hoping here to also build communities and encourage dialogue around

Workplace accessibility and inclusion

And perhaps most importantly, to inspire other employees, lawyers, community organizations.

And persons with disabilities to embark on and persist in their own journeys.

To start, would you mind just telling me a little bit about yourself?

your education and employment background?

Yeah, for sure. So my name is Jackie Pugh.

have a um

a couple of degrees. My first was in a bachelor's of music, which was an honors bachelor's

And the second one, I guess I have a minor in women and gender studies as well from that

And the second one was a master's of social justice and community engagement.

I have had a wide range of jobs

starting with customer service and, you know, food service industry um

positions to research positions and

administration over the years it's varied and I have a wide a wide array of experience uh and

a lot of different areas for work.

Okay, so it sounds like we have a lot to potentially discuss today.

Yeah, for sure.

So can you tell me about a highly positive experience for you at work?

where you felt included and able to fully participate?

Yeah, absolutely.

I've had a couple of, or I've held a couple of uh

like university-based

job positions in my time.

Both in school and out of school. When I was in school, there was a job that I had that

pertain to working in kind of like an equity office um

And I was…

constantly kind of

really pleasantly surprised at how accommodating my boss was and how accommodating my coworkers were.

A lot of them didn't

really focus on accessibility as

something that needs to be solved or

addressed in the major way

they kind of were able to mix it into

getting to know me as a person instead of having this

huge conversation about

you know accommodations or like we want to get to know you as a person and what you need

as a worker and part of that was just, you know, that I needed accommodations for

for working there and

you know, every time that I would go in

or join on calls, there would be like

check-ins at the beginning to say like, you know, how are you doing are we

Is this a good time to meet? If not, we can reschedule. They were very flexible.

And very understanding um

I think it's pretty easy for a lot of employers to get frustrated with

You know, disabled

people's need for

rescheduling or rescheduling or

canceling meetings for health reasons or because of appointments.

And they were constantly just reassuring and said like

you know it's okay if we need to

put this on the back burner so that you can get something fixed or to

to get to this appointment because like it's more important that you

are, you know, taking care of yourself and we can deal with the rest later

So there's a lot of really

positive things that came out of those jobs.

A lot of which have carried with me to

other workplaces in terms of like the expectations of how to be treated as a worker.

So one of the things I think

that was most positive was that they

again saw me as

a whole person

am not a problem to be fixed or something that

might be difficult to address and they

saw my expertise and my

kind of my lived experience as

a…

a really positive aspect of my employment.

And that's what carried through in our kind of work relationship wasn't that like

they were giving me

accommodations, but instead they were

allowing me to make decisions and have autonomy over my workplace.

um and how

I was going to be received and treated in that way so that way

Yeah, lots of really positive experiences in those jobs that I had.

That sounds great. Thanks for sharing. It sounds like um

there were some processes in place

that really made

Just your everyday communications and working relationship

work pretty smoothly.

Okay.

who was involved in this process? Did it come from management? Was it just everyone you worked with? How did that play out?

Yeah, this was um

during kind of the tail end of the first

bit of the COVID pandemic. And so a lot of our work was done online so i had a

limited number of coworkers at my disposal. I had

One kind of touchstone person that

I went to, she didn't like to call herself my boss but she

for all intents and purposes was, or at least was a supervisor for me and ran the office that I was a part of.

And she essentially

was the person that connected me to

different areas of the university and those people I considered to be coworkers because we were working towards a similar

goal, even though we weren't under the same office, it was a bit of a strange thing, but it was COVID and we didn't have a lot of

like a solidified understanding of who

we were to each other we just kind of

saw that we needed to

to work on a goal and join together to do that. So it came from

like mostly mostly that main

kind of hiring figure um

and uh

than there were offshoots of other people as well. But yeah, mainly that that person.

Okay.

And what was your role in making this work well?

I think I was honest, which is difficult, I think, for

for me in particular and my kind of experiences with

interviewing, with getting hired. You know, I've been

I started working

as a disabled person when I was, you know, 15, 16 years old so

I've always been

disabled in every field that I've worked in. And a lot of those fields have required me to

be very careful about who I tell

about my disability and what I disclose and when I do so because the

then jobs won't call you back or there'll be a very distinct like, oh, well, you can't do this. This interview is pretty much over because we can't

you know um

we can't kind of fit that fit you into

our workplaces.

And I think that with this, the reason why it worked on my end was that I saw an opening for being

vulnerable and open and honest with

a hiring manager

and trusted that she would receive what i said

positively and would take it and actually do something with it.

I've had a lot of experiences where that isn't the case and it's kind of

stung me in a way. And so I really, I think that me being honest about

what I need for accommodations, how much time I need for projects, if I need an extension.

On timelines, if I feel like I'm not you know

something isn't mixing or melding well

Or even just if, you know, I'm not

kind of understanding something that all of it really

depended on me

like communicating that to my to my hiring manager and then also

having open and honest communication and conversations with her

Okay.

about, you know, this week is bad for

chronic pain this week is a bit difficult because I have three appointments in a row that I've been waiting for for two years like there's a lot of things that I think

if they hadn't been said would have been passed off as not

caring or not being invested in the work that I'm doing.

And so me being open and transparent with her

was part of how I made that work.

And also just understanding my

rights as a disabled worker and

understanding how

AODA works and how the um

different programming can help me

If there needs to be some kind of

push in a direction, which thankfully there wasn't but um

yeah just having having tools in my back pocket to pull out if I need them.

Right. And so one thing you said there struck me was that there was

you saw an opening, to be honest, about your needs.

Mm-hmm.

What was it that that hiring manager did that made you feel like you could be honest, that presented this opening?

it's it's

Interesting, because I've thought about this a lot.

just over the years and over the years

you know looking at different managers and different jobs that I'd had and how this is so different and refreshing

And I genuinely think that the one thing

that this person did was

like I said, just kind of see me as a whole person

instead of seeing me as a problem or as something

an issue to be solved or a

a complication in her day. There was never

a look of or an acknowledgement of

oh, this might be difficult for me to figure out. It was always a positive

okay, this is challenging because of the system that we work in.

but not because of you or your situation. This is a broader

system problem and she was very committed to

You know, in a system that's rigidly

ableist like academia, she was willing to push back against that

to a point where she advocated for me

uh with you know the dean of students she um pushed back against

some people that thought that my position in her office wasn't necessary and advocated for

the inclusion of disability justice in

an equity program um

And so I think that there's a

a very human aspect to

her way of hiring and onboarding and

having me as an employee that was

very helpful as a disabled worker.

but also just very touching and

kind and compassionate and it's something that

Unfortunately, I haven't had a lot of experience with, but when it happened

it was such a relief

um and

such a beautiful way to approach work

That's super insightful. Thanks for sharing that reflection.

From everything you just said about what worked well, the environment that this hiring manager created.

how do you summarize the key messages for employers for this experience? What do they need to know?

To be able to replicate some of this.

So I think…

the main facets of it are

focusing on if you're a hiring manager looking at

hiring disabled workers

there is an instinct or a kind of like knee-jerk reaction to

maybe panic or have a a really

worried energy about, okay, I either need to

accommodate this person so that they feel included or

I don't know how

to like

accommodate this person. I don't know how to handle

having a disabled worker working for me

And I think that the main thing that's been positive about my experiences in the workplace have been

when the

the again kind of the human side of the human

hiring gets put first where

you learn about the person

you learn about their lives, you learn about how

they function day to day.

Part of that is learning about disability and learning about what challenges they face on a day-to-day basis.

But a lot of it is just

asking

like meaningful questions and

you know in the same way that a lot of employees have to bend

and kind of twist themselves to make

at work on their end as employees

being flexible and being able to bend to

see the perspective and to understand

how your disabled worker is functioning in your workplace and the amount of

extra work they have to do the you know

physical, emotional, mental labor of

trying to advocate for yourself in a workplace that does not have

accommodations or does not care to have them or doesn't want to know

how to accommodate people. It's an exhausting process

um and

I think that

in my positive experiences.

really understanding the person and who they are

And seeing what they bring as

gifts and uh

you know an opportunity to grow and learn

is more important, I think, than trying to problem solve right away.

Because there might not be problems right away.

And I think that there's again that knee-jerk reaction of something's going to snag and something's going to

there's going to be conflict.

There doesn't have to be. And I think that's what I've learned from that employee

employer relationship is it like you

sometimes it feels like there's

snags that happen right away.

But most of the time it's just

system navigating and

trying to understand

how we all fit in this process.

Thank you for sharing. That's great. Sounds like you've also unfortunately had some negative experiences.

with employment where maybe you didn't feel included or faced barriers in accessible employment.

Do you want to share anything about kind of like what didn't work to kind of

I guess tell employers what not to do.

Yeah, absolutely.

I've had a um

As I think most

disabled people that I've talked to have uh

experienced a lot of our employee experiences and job based

experiences have had a lot of negative impacts on us.

And, you know, it starts, I believe, in

the interviewing and onboarding process as it does. Even before that with uh putting the

the job out into the world and kind of seeing who goes for it.

you know, I've applied for countless jobs that do not have

statements on accessibility um that

become very difficult to navigate

You know, oh, can I send in an accommodation request or should I not?

that makes it difficult to to

be hired in general.

Interviewing is a really, really big point of contention for me. I think that

a lot of my

hopelessness as a disabled worker comes from

constantly interviewing and constantly being told

either that my disability won't jive well or won't work well with the workplace that they have.

going or the workplace environment that they have

or the

there's nothing that they can do about the inaccessibility of buildings or

the inaccessibility of

the street or the city that this job is in

there's a lot of stuff that has happened. Even recently, I had an interview with um

an equity office

that I considered to be pretty accommodating and

accessible from an outsider perspective. And when I interviewed

I disclosed that I am an ambulatory wheelchair user and that I would be using a wheelchair to

you know go to and fro from the buildings and

immediately the person just said you know like

I have to tell you, I want to be open about the fact that

we are like the buildings are extremely inaccessible. We don't have

wheelchair buttons on the doors. We don't have an elevator like we are in a

you know, three-story building and we're on the third floor

And so at that point in the interview i knew

that despite having all of the

prerequisites and all of the

more more

training and experience than any other applicant

I would not have

a job offer at the end of it because i

use a wheelchair to get around.

And that was

particularly difficult to

Mm-hmm.

stomach, especially from an equity office or

something that you know prides itself on

trying to make things as

equitable or accessible as possible

And yeah, sure enough, a couple days later

got an email saying that you know i wasn't chosen for the position

But, you know, good luck next time type thing and

Mm-hmm.

those emails are constant. It's barraging every day of just interviews that you do and you know even if you

don't disclose your disability. There's always something that you feel like you have to tell them

And, uh.

it just it it very rarely works out

in a way that does not make the disabled person

Mm-hmm.

almost like punished for their disability in that way. And that's just the interviewing process, the onboarding process is a whole other

Whole other thing I've had

difficulty keeping

long-term jobs, not because of a lack of trying or because i

you know don't want to, but because of the fact that

as my disability has progressed and as i've worked more

my accommodations have changed or my way of

you know, interacting with the workplace has shifted significantly

And employers have kind of like

dusted me off of their hands and like

said i

can't continue to accommodate you at this point. It's getting to be too much

or you're asking too much or you aren't

telling me exactly what you need when that's not the case and I've been open and transparent about that.

you know there's

times I remember specifically as a teenager working in customer service where

I would request breaks.

would not get them and would have full medical breakdowns

In my workplace, which is humiliating and difficult to deal with.

And also.

like later on has

almost exacerbated or made worse the symptoms that i have

for my disability because I was forced to push my body past

its limits and so therefore made me more disabled

more permanently disabled in a lot of ways.

And so there's a lot of things

that a lot of large things like barriers to accommodations

But there's also small print things like in

there was a job that I applied to where I had to be able to lift 50 pounds over my head.

repeatedly for six hours straight.

And it was one small bit of that job

that I knew that

you know would not be a problem if I got hired there.

But I was open and honest with them and said like i can't

lift that, and I can't do that for more than

maybe 30 minutes at a time.

And again, the interviews ended immediately like just

flat out no no question of I've had people say like

This interview is concluded we

aren't considering you for the position anymore

we wish you luck in finding a job that works for you. And even some employers that have said

you know have asked me like where are you going to go or what what job is going to

take you at this point because you're

very specific

about the kind of things that you can and can't do

And that leads to a lot of

really difficult feelings for me over the years of just

feeling like i'm not feeling like i'm not

I'm asking too much or I'm not

Mm-hmm.

being taken seriously in that way.

I'm really sorry to hear about those experiences.

That's unfortunate and hopefully we can help change some of that

by sharing.

Yes.

how do you respond in a situation like that?

You know, it sounds like there's been a lot of no's and a lot of

Yeah, just essentially a lot of too bads. How do you respond to that?

It definitely takes a lot of

constant reassurance in yourself and your self-worth.

there have been, you know, times where i

have felt

incredibly, again, hopeless and helpless about my job prospects my future

You know, despite having two degrees, you know, a master's degree and

and all of this, like, I have a lot of work experience and a lot of

I think like valuable expertise in the fields that I'm in

and hearing

it's not good enough over and over again, not because of something that I'm doing or not doing

But just because of something that's intrinsically a part of who i am

has a deep rooted impact

on who I am as a person. And so I have to kind of

steal myself to that and

understand that

It's a part of the process. And I kind of always

It's taken me around a decade, but I've finally gotten to a point of

if I get told no or too bad

I will always follow up.

and ask why or give a prompting question of

why do you think that this is okay to do

to disabled workers and most of the time i won't get a response

Because people don't have an answer.

Mm-hmm.

But I will constantly

ask them, you know, if someone says like i

I'm not hiring you

you know, we didn't choose you for this role. Usually it ends there where they're like, we wish you luck.

Have a good day. I will ask why.

Okay.

you know and kind of just say like, I have the expertise i have

the availability that you want. I met every criteria that you laid out in the

application, what is the reason

for…

the denial um

I want to know from my own personal records and

Mm-hmm.

Sometimes that's worked, sometimes it hasn't. Again, employers can be helpful and not helpful in that way.

And I think that

over the years, like the nose and two baths don't get easier

But they do motivate me more because I've heard of so many other people that have had the same problems and the same

responses from potential employers or people that have been unemployed for a year or more like I was right out of university and just like

can't explain why I'm not employed because I have everything that I need to be employed.

And then having to turn to the one thing that I know

is the reason why I'm not employed.

or won't be employed, which is that I have a disability.

And no one wants to take the time

or effort to understand

or understand how I work.

and won't get the privilege of my

expertise and lived experience in the workplace.

I think that having that kind of mentality

has really helped me

And…

not falling back into negative thought and

a negative understanding of my own self-worth as an employee

And as a disabled worker.

Mm-hmm.

And what do you think could be done differently to make it work better? What can employers do to

get away from these knee-jerk reactions.

I think that

meeting disabled people is extremely important.

and talking to them and having

open dialogue, not even about workplaces or jobs in general just

meeting disabled people

in the world talking with them

an understanding that like

we are whole human beings that have a lot of experiences and a lot of really interesting stories to tell.

we want to be seen as like human and we want to have experiences that

you know we can

carry forward as everyone else does. And I think that

employers sometimes, again, see us as problems or

things to solve or, you know, just that kind of knee jerk reaction i think the

the main thing that I found that's helpful is

Asking questions, being curious.

not in a

way to solve problems at first.

We can always solve problems that that's always

will always be something positive that I see as the employer-employee relationship is that

you can troubleshoot

all the time and it's not

something that has to happen on a deadline you know people's accommodations are going to change

as their life changes in the same way that

a person who's been recently bereaved or

has gotten sick is going to have their accommodations change

And so I think the biggest thing, and I think this came out of COVID as well of

a lot of people got sick in a short period of time and it was a mass disabling event

we all saw what it was like to be disabled.

without having the permanent disability aspect of it.

we were able to see what it's like to

So I cannot come into my job for a month

Because I'm sick.

And the employees or the employers just have to deal with that.

they have to be able to troubleshoot and problem solve on their end.

and uh

I think that thinking on that mentality on the kind of COVID mentality of

there will always be people that are sick. There will always be people that have disabilities that

need accommodations

And…

their expertise and experiences are

invaluable to invaluable to

your workplace because we have

experiences that no other group of people has.

And we know how to problem solve.

a lot quicker than a lot of other people that I've met in workplaces because we do it

all the time, every day, you know, I problem solve

every time I go out in my wheelchair, I'm constantly

assessing and fixing my environment to make sure that I can be out in the world.

And so I think that understanding that and understanding that

you know, the disabled workers that apply for your jobs are genuinely

interested in working for you

and want to participate.

is one of the most important things.

about employing disabled people in your workplace.

Thanks.

And I just want to end with one kind of final questions about

disability inclusive practices or actions that work well. Is there a key message that you want to

employers to take away from this like

what in your experience

has led to success.

Yeah.

I see a lot of stuff um

surrounding universal versus individual design

in workplaces that um

I think AODA has something

talking about that, about kind of trying to

you know universal design being

you know we accommodate all based on

a one-size-fits-all approach to

accessibility. And so like the, you know, we have this

list of accommodations

that we can give out to any disabled person that we employ.

And I would encourage people to

think I would encourage specifically employers to think about

individualizing that approach for

specific disabled workers

what I find difficult and challenging and unaccommodating about a workplace is not going to be

what another person with a different type of disability is going to

experience from me. I have a physical disability that limits my walking.

someone that's hard of hearing might have

definitely will have a different experience

And we'll need different accommodations from me

And having a pre-made list of

these are the accommodations that we can give out

Here, you can all have these

isn't always the best way

I find to accommodate. I find individual conversations

about what people need based on their individual needs.

is a lot more helpful and it helps in the long run with

sustainable accommodation. So we have

you know for me it's a good example is, you know, when I was working

at food industry, I would say I can't stand for more than

five hours at a time. And so I had like shifts that are four hours or less please

And so they were able to accommodate me that and then

as time went on and as my mobility decreased, I had to say

okay, now I have a doctor's note for two hours at a time.

Okay, now it's one hour. Okay, now I have to have a chair

when I'm you know making food or whatever else um

And the flexibility

It's very scary to tell people about that as a disabled person.

And as a disabled worker

But I think that if it's met with flexibility and we can figure this out mentality.

instead of a we can't do that or

we don't have the criteria to understand how to put a chair

back there or something like it's

I would say be creative

with your solutions and understand that like even

in the most rigid systems that have

you know the guidelines set out and everything there is always room

to push and flex

kind of the rules that make up an accessible work practices.

And

the best advocates are the ones that come from the top

down uh it's been really interesting to see that happen

In my own experiences in workplaces.

And so, yeah, just like

imploring

you know, hiring managers to

continue the

to fight and

struggle for accessibility justice.

in your workplace.

I think that's a great place to

wrap up for today. So thank you, Jackie, so much for sharing

some of your stories about inclusive practices, what worked and what didn't work.

I'm sure that

what you have shared is great knowledge

for employers and persons with disabilities to take into into their

into consideration in their journeys.

Thanks so much.

Yeah, thank you very much.

Emile Tompa:
Welcome everybody to this month's IDEA speaker series. Our regular host, Dan Samosh, is off this week so I and my colleague, Rebecca Gewurtz, are filling in for him. I am Emile Tompa, I'm the Executive Director of IDEA and Senior Scientist at The Institute for Work & Health. Hosting with me is Rebecca Gewurtz, Director of IDEA and an Associate Professor in the School of Rehabilitation Sciences at McMaster University. Please note we are recording this session, and recordings will be made available on our IDEA website, https://vraie-idea.ca/index.html.

For those who may not know about IDEA, it is a social innovation laboratory focused on helping create stronger and more diverse labour markets that includes persons with disabilities through knowledge to practice. And IDEA is an acronym for Inclusive Design for Employment Access. The laboratory develops knowledge informed tools and resources through what we describe as a co-design process with our partners. And these tools and resources help advance workplace capacity for recruitment, hiring, onboarding, retention, mentorship, and promotion of persons with disabilities across the full range of employment opportunities. Now before we begin, um I'd like to share a land acknowledgement that is, um, relevant to the IDEA National Office, which is in the Toronto region. So, the National Office of IDEA Social Innovation Laboratory is situated, on what has for thousands of years been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca and the Mississaugas of the Credit River. It is still home to many indigenous people from across Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to conduct our work on it. Please note, as I mentioned, that this acknowledgement is relevant for the Toronto area, however, since we are gathering for this meeting virtually, we suggest that you think about the communities in your respective locations as well. So, I'm going to pass it over to Rebecca to introduce the webinar.

Rebecca Gewurtz:
Thank you. So this monthly speaker series serves as an opportunity to hear the latest about current topics in the work disability policy arena, and learn about activities underway within and beyond, uh, the IDEA social innovation laboratory. During the last 20 minutes of the webinar, we will hold a question and answer period. We invite you to type your questions in the Q&A box at any time throughout the presentation and we will answer as many questions as we can. Our speaker for today is Mahadeo Sukhai, Vice President, Research & International Affairs and the Chief Accessibility Officer at CNIB, or the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. Mahadeo is also co-lead of IDEA's Hub 4, Inclusive Environmental Design. He also chairs an Accessibility, uh, Standards Canada technical committee that is developing an inclusive employment standard.

Mahadeo is the world's first congenitally blind geneticist and a leading expert on accessibility, including a focus on graduate and postdoctoral research training in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and health care disciplines. Mahadeo is joining us today to talk about why disclosure doesn't work. Welcome Mahadeo, and over to you.

Mahadeo Sukhai:
Thank you very much Rebecca, um I thought it's, it's always good to actually have a bit of a provocative title for a session like this, um it, it's a pleasure to be here with everyone today. Um, I'm uh, I'm calling from, uh, Kingston, Ontario, which is the traditional territory of the the Huron-Wendat peoples, um, and I'm grateful to have the privilege to live and work and play on this land as a first generation, uh, newcomer to the space.

I'm going to share my screen now, uh, and uh, and, and we'll, we'll go through, um we'll go through a conversation for the next little while. Um, and we'll have time for conversation and discussion afterward. Um, as, as Rebecca indicated, the title of the, the presentation today is:

Why Disclosure Doesn't Work. Um I, I've subtitled it:

The Seven Barriers to Effective Accessibility Supports in the Workplace. Sort of riffing on the, the Dale Carnegie, um, and, and, uh, and Patrick Lencioni style titles for things like:

The Seven Habits of Effective People, and um, and Five Dysfunctions of an Effective Team, and so on, and so forth. Um there's a, there's a mock book cover on the right hand side of the slide. The book doesn't exist as of yet, um, but, but I, I actually do think it would be neat to write this up one of these days, and, and and tell this particular story. Um, my email address, which is simply my first name dot my last name, um is, is Mahadeo Sukhai, also on the title slide, so folks know how to get in touch with me.

Uh, I will acknowledge my affiliations, which Rebecca's already kindly done, um so, so my affiliation of course at CNIB, as, as, um, as hub four co-lead for IDEA, um, and Adjunct appointments at the Faculty of Business and Information Technology at, at Ontario Tech University, and Inclusive Design at OCAD University, and in the Department of Ophthalmology at the School of Medicine at Queens University, here in Kingston. Um, in addition to chairing the employment technical committee, I'm also the Co-chair of the External Advisory Committee on Accessibility and Systemic Ableism for CIHR, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and the Chair of the International Network of Visually Impaired Researchers and their Allies, or INVA.

I will make a disclaimer upfront, having told you where I come from and, and all of my affiliations, that the perspectives that I'm about to share with you are evidence-informed and evidence-based, but are actually my unique synthesis of that knowledge, and, and frankly don't reflect the position of my employer, um or, or any of of the other affiliations, necessarily. So, so this is, this is raw Mahadeo, um, and, uh and, and you, you either like it or you don't, um, and, and we can, we can talk about that later. Um, I, I will acknowledge though, all the work that was done, uh, in this space by my team the, the CNIB research and IDEA team, um, which is a disability-led, disability driven, disability focused research enterprise in the nonprofit space, um, particularly focusing on, on two pieces of work that were Accessibility Standards Canada funded. Uh, our inclusive workplaces research project that wrapped last year, and, and the accessibility competencies research project that's ongoing.

Um, I will acknowledge, uh, the ongoing work in IDEA Hub 4 with, uh, Jordana Maise,l and, and Jimin Choi, uh, and current and past members of my team, um, and an ongoing collaboration also with Dr. Johannes Boegerhausen from the University of Rotterdam School of Management that I will refer to in this presentation, um, as well as, uh helpful and ongoing discussions with Anley Lur from IDEA team, um, that have informed this work. Um I, I always find it interesting when we do the acknowledgements at the end of a presentation, when there's no time and, and we, we throw a slide up and we simply say, "I thank all these people, any questions?" Uh I, I think it's really worth it to, to just give the the collaborations their space and, and thank them upfront and um, not on this slide. And, and this, this was actually a, an oversight on my part, but not on this slide I, I would also thank Emile and Rebecca, who have been two very long, long-standing, very, very wonderful collaborators of mine since the very beginning of my time at CNIB. So, so my thanks to them as well.

Um so, so I'm, I'm going to, having dispensed with all of that, start with a statement, and it's in fact a quotation from Microsoft, and it's, "Accessibility should be built in, not bolted on."

And so, so where are we going to start this conversation? We're going to start it in the space of disclosure and the duty to accommodate. So there is a process for duty to accommodate. Some would call it a paradigm, um and, and it is a three-step process that involves the worker, or the job applicant, and the employer. Uh the first step is the workers' duty to inform, the second step is the employer's duty to inquire, followed by, after a review of of the available information, uh, the employer is then, um, is then obligated to uh, to undertake a duty to accommodate, provided that certain conditions are, are met. And if certain conditions are not met, then, then we we go into a different part of the process that I'll get to in a moment. This, this approach requires documentation, um, in order to, I'm going to use the term 'validate,' uh, the lived experience with a disability, or, or 'validate' the, the accessibility request that's been made. Um, and that documentation is, is medical or, or rehabilitation documentation that is effectively required to, to as I say, 'validate' the disability and, and the accommodation request.

There's a challenge, however, because a lot of, a lot of documentation that comes, unless it comes from a rehab professional, the documentation that comes from a medical professional is diagnostic information. And, and medical code of conduct usually, um, prevents the translation of diagnostic information to functional impact. Um, and so somebody's actually got to mediate that translation. Uh, larger employers will have occupational health and safety departments that are comprised of, of uh, occupational therapists, that will attempt to do that. Um but, but often what ends up happening is a lot of employers are, are trying to work out-- well, Dr Sukhai has bilateral congenital cataracts, with deprivation amblyopia, and translate that into functional impact in the workplace, which is a very difficult thing to do. Um, functional limitations are context dependent. They cannot always be inferred from diagnosis, and it's, it's really important to, to just understand that up front.

There is this thing that I alluded to a moment ago, called undue hardship in the duty to accommodate. So an employer can actually refuse to provide accommodations if uh, if, if the following conditions are met:

number one, the accommodations change the nature of the job to be performed; or number two, the accommodations will pose a safety or health risk to colleagues, clients, or patients; uh and number three, the, the accommodations are too expensive. This last one cannot be applied on its own, so, so you have to say that the accommodations requested pose a safety or health risk to colleagues, clients, or patients and, in order to provide accommodations that don't do that, it's too expensive. So that would, that would be how the, the, the, the third um, the third option here actually works.

You, you cannot go in front of a judge, if this goes to uh, if this goes to court, and say I didn't do this because it was too expensive, um because that legally is, is not that, that's, that's not going to help you. Um there's also these things called, bonafide occupational requirements, um, and they play into the duty to accommodate, um, around the notion of does, does the uh, accessibility support, or accommodation request, change the nature of the job? Um, so, so bonafide occupational requirements can actually be legitimately discriminatory against persons with disabilities. Uh and, and the way to actually figure this out is to use something called the Morin test, um, which is, which is effectively a legal test to determine uh, if a um, if a job duty, uh is discriminatory, and legitimately so, against persons with disabilities. For example, uh, if you are, um, if you are applying for a job to drive a bus, having a driver's license is not discriminatory. If you're applying for a job to work in an office, and that job says you have to have a driver's license, that may be discriminatory, depending on the specific nature of, of the job. Um, and so, so if, if, if an employer can legitimately argue in front, in favour, of a discriminatory bonafide occupational requirement, which cannot be accommodated, then undo hardship will, will apply.

All of this is, is really set up to balance organizational risk and employee benefit. Um, the policies that exist are in place to, to um, to mitigate the potential for organizational risk while potentially maximizing um, the benefits to an employee who who requires this, um, this this process to be put in place. But I would argue with you, that it is actually almost, by definition, an ablest-disablist framework. I'm going to define those two terms for you, um, one of which you might be more familiar with than the other. And so, ableism is the mindset of actively centring the ability to do a task, or tasks. Disablism is the mindset of actively marginalizing, or deprioritizing, the lived experience of persons with disabilities.

Um, and, and so, so if, if the, if, if we, if we consider a space where, where we actively say, you know, you must be able to do X in order to do a job. Then you are, you're, you're potentially in an ableist space, because you're prioritizing the ability, um, in prioritizing the ability, you're not actually actively saying, 'I discriminate against persons with disabilities,' but what you're actually doing is, you're saying, 'I, I will emphasize the ability to do something right.' And so, so if you think about, if you think about every job description that anyone's ever written, um, all of, all of the qualifications, and all of the essential duties are effectively all coming at things from an ableist perspective. You're effectively saying, 'you must demonstrate to me that, that you have the ability to do these things in order to get the job.' Right, um, so, so the, the, the job description is not actively disablist, but it is actively ableist. And, and, the duty to accommodate process, I would, I would actually argue with you, can be both ablest and disablist together.

Let's talk for a moment about workers with disabilities, because there are four groups of workers with disabilities, uh, and, and, the policies that exist in theory, apply to all of them, but in, in, in practice were really perhaps, only design, designed for, for some of these groups. So, so the four groups of persons with disabilities that are workers, could be a worker like myself, who was born with a lived experience with a disability, that's group one. Group two would be the worker who acquires the disability prior to becoming employed, specifically becoming employed in that particular job, but, but it could also be that the worker's acquired a disability prior to any employment history whatsoever. Group three is the worker who acquires the disability while working and, and so it's an on the job, um, worker acquiring a disability. And then, group four is, is the worker who acquires the disability um, while they are, while, while they're employed, but it's due to illness, injury, or accident, not related to the job, um and so, so it's not super clear on, on the slide, but I bolded the the last two groups to in-, to indicate that those are the two groups that, when we think about work disability management policies, and, and we think, think about, um, and, and we think about disability in the workplace, those are the two groups that tend to come to mind first. And frankly, pre-1970's really, those were the two groups that, that we were talking about related to disability in the workplace.

The notion of, um, someone with a congenital disability, or the notion that, that somebody who, um, acquired a disability prior to looking for a job could actually look for work, wasn't the thing until about 50 years ago. Uh, and so, so all of, all of the ancestral policies that were built in this space, were not built with those two, um, with those two use cases in mind. I will also argue that the duty to accommodate process, and I just, I just put the slide up again that illustrates what the duty to accommodate process is, so duty to inform, duty to inquire, and duty to accommodate, hinges on that duty to inform. And another word for duty to inform, is disclosure.

Disclosure is the practice of self-identifying as a person with a disability, which is considered to be synonymous with identifying an accessibility need. We will often call this self-identification within the disability community, because disclosure has a little bit of a weird connotation, um, a little bit of a medical connotation, um, it is considered to be a component of self- advocacy within the disability community. Um, and it is required for accessibility and accommodation supports, and education and employment settings, so accommodation requires disclosure, which means that accommodation then, is a reactive process. You, in air quotes, "need to ask for help." The human rights requirement behind all of this is the disclosure of need for accessibility support, and what that is assumed to mean, in practice is, again, medical or similar documentation of diagnosis or functional impact.

And so, so I ask again, a question that I asked before, which is, 'who translates between the two?' Because not everybody knows how to mediate those two languages. Disclosure is the functional route that a worker or a job applicant will take into the workplace accommodation process. It is, it is both an expected and an essential part of this process. And as I say, it is, it is a fundamental declaration, "I need help" in air quotes so, so how should this, how should, how should this work? The mechanism of disclosure, I think, becomes important in the disability, um, advocacy space and in, in the, in the employment coaching space. The conversation usually goes, 'What are you disclosing? When are you disclosing? How are you disclosing? and To whom are you disclosing?'

According to the human rights codes, what to disclose the duty to accommodate, again, refer--or sorry, the duty to inform, refers to the disclosure of a functional need, so for example, I use large print, or I communicate using ASL, or I need to flex my hours. In practice, often this gets attached to, I have a visual impairment, I am deaf capital D, I take medication, I have a young child, I'm observing Ramadan, or whatever right. When to disclose is also, is, is also something that gets brought up in, in the conversation about how to go through this process, a lot. So, so disclosure can happen in the cover letter, in the interview prep, in the interview after the job offer, the first day, the end day, or more to the point-- disclosure should occur, according to the way that the duty to accommodate process is set out, when the need arises. But there is a, again, there's, there's this tension between talking about what I need from a functional perspective, and talking about my diagnosis in the context of disclosure.

So if I'm disclosing, do I disclose one, do I disclose both, do I disclose, which, which, which way do I go in this teeter totter? Um, but then, what also leads to why so, so an employer will, will ultimately say, if, if I say, 'I need large print,' an employer will say, 'well why do you need that,' or 'why do you need ASL in every meeting,' or 'why do you need to flex your hours?' The intended sentiment behind this is, 'I need to know more, so that I can help more effectively.' And so, duty to inform leads to the duty to inquire, but then what ends up happening is, is that duty to inquire also requires the documentation. So, so that's a legitimization of the request, or justification of the request, as well as that proof of disability piece.

So, so, so, so, so let, let's actually talk about, is this a good thing, or not? So, Johanne and I did some work, uh, where we looked at, is disclosure in an interview a positive thing? So, so um, what we did was we, we looked at um, whether somebody disclosed against not disclosing, and against disclosing an environmental condition that has the same functional impacts as a disability in a virtual interview setting. So, for example, um, the way we set this up with our case scenario was, was the um, the, the job applicant was hard of hearing. They, they may have had difficulty hearing the question, um, because of, of that and, and so, so the, the environmental condition is, 'I'm sorry there's road noise in my, in, in the street outside my apartment, because there's construction work, so I wasn't able to hear you as clearly, because somebody's jackhammering something,' right.

So, so the, the three conditions tested were, no disclosure, I'm disclosing a, a disability, and I'm disclosing this other thing that situationally makes it seem like I have a disability, but isn't really, isn't really a lived experience. And, and when we did that, what we found was that disclosure of the, of the functional need of a disability in the interview was most likely to lead to hiring intent among hiring managers and feelings of trust and warmth and competence about the candidate in those hiring managers. So, so, so in the context of an interview setting, in this particular kind of scenario, um disclosure of a functional need was beneficial, much more beneficial, than, than no disclosure, um, and, and also more beneficial than, than a disclosure of, of a, an environmental condition.

But then, how does one disclose? Is there a phrasing that works best for disclosure? So what we also did was, we actually demonstrated some, some approaches to disclosure in an interview setting may work better than others in fostering, again, intent to hire and feelings of trust, warmth, and competence about the candidate in hiring managers. Um, so what we found, and I'll, I'll define these for you in a moment, what we found was that disclosure of functional impact actually led to more positive results than either ability first disclosure, disability minimizing disclosure, assistive aid justification disclosure, or a disclosure of diagnosis.

So let me define those, those five things for you. So, so um functional impact would be, see if it seems like I don't hear or misunderstood the question, it's because I have hearing loss. The ability first disclosure would be, I have hearing loss and it makes me a better worker because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and of note-- that's the one that that in the disability community we usually teach people to do. We teach people to do the, the I have a lived experience it makes me a better employee, because. Right, um, disability minimizing disclosure is, I have hearing loss but it doesn't impact my job performance, because. Right, assistive aid justification is, I have hearing loss and with these assistive aids I can blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Disclosure of diagnosis is just, I have hearing loss.

So, so what we found was that, that functional impact disclosure, which actually basically says-- this is a situation that might impact my ability to participate and this is how, led to the most positive outcomes in the scenario that that we were running, here. Um, not ability first disclosure. Ability first disclosure actually backfired on people, right, it didn't work nearly as well. Disability minimizing disclosure backfired on people. Assistive justification backfired on people, um, and, and disclosure of diagnosis didn't didn't do anything, right.

So, so, so it actually does matter what type of disclosure one, one does in the interview setting, given this particular work. And again, um I, I will just note that, that ability first disclosure and assist of a justification are the two primary mechanisms that we tend to teach in the disability community when, when you, when you have employment readiness training that goes on within that space.

So the other thing about disability and disclosure is that context absolutely matters. You've got quality of lived experience, you've got severity of disability experience, you've got use of assistive technology, you've got virtual versus in-person, um, interviews, and work environments. And all of those things impact whether the conversation actually needs to happen in the first place, right.

So, when do I not need to disclose? Um, this is a fun one, because every time I, I, I talk to, um, I talk to folks who are who are in the, um, in, in the, in the process of, of employment readiness training, and I asked this question, when do you not need to disclose?, um a lot of time, a lot of times, they don't, don't get all the answers. So, so, the answers are when someone on the hiring team knows me, I don't need to disclose. So, so if there was a personal referral into the job and someone on the other end of the table actually knows who I am, I don't need to disclose, because they already know who I am. When I'm using assistive technology I don't need to disclose. If I walk into an interview, um, with a guide dog, or I'm using a white cane, or I'm using a wheelchair, or a scooter, or an as interpreter-- all of these things, all of these people, all of these aids actually disclose for me, and I don't physically have to say anything. Uh, the third one that people tend to forget about a lot is, is when my web footprint discloses for me, because it's on Facebook, or it's on LinkedIn, or, or you know I've, I've posted on X/Twitter ,or whatever it's called these days. Um, or there's something on Instagram, and, and in, in putting those things, and they might be totally social, but I've outed myself in a social setting, and my employer can go look that up, right. But I also don't need to disclose when I have no perceived need for accessibility support in the workplace. And I put that in there because that's actually what the law says, right. I don't need to disclose if I don't actually have any accessibility support need because I can figure out how to do this on my own.

When, when Johannes and I were, were staging the experiments I just told you about, we also did a bit of a deep dive into the disclosure literature and there, there's some fundamental challenges with the disclosure literature the way it's currently set up. First of all, the studies don't control for the method of disclosure, it's either disclosure-- yes, or disclosure-- no. But there, there isn't a, there isn't a case where disclosure-- yes, also looks at what methods would actually work properly, right. Um, and so, one group of studies looks at disclosure--yes, disclosure--no. One group of, one group of studies assumes disclosure-- yes, and then asks the question of which method works best. Um, we did both together, to, to avoid that, that particular barrier.

Um, studies do not control for scenarios where disclosure is not necessary, and studies also assume that hiring committees don't get surprised by disclosure. So, what do I mean by that? And, I'll come back to what I mean by that in a moment, um, but I, I, I will, I will actually just note that disclosure will work under the right circumstances, that, that's, that's what we found. Disclosure works using the appropriate wording, um, when you're identifying a functional need or limitation and the hiring committee knows how to respond and doesn't forget itself. So, so, so how do you surprise a hiring committee? How does the, how does the hiring committee forget itself? These actually happened to me, uh, these are direct quotations from job interviews that I had, um, when I was searching for, for faculty appointments, uh, 10 years ago:

'we wanted to interview you because of your work in the accessibility space,' actually not because I, I had a research portfolio and, and, and could compete for the job; 'why would you keep doing all that other stuff,' referring to the aforementioned work in the accessibility space; 'when you get this job, how much of this work is really, really your own;' and, my favourite, 'so what kind of car do you like to drive,' when driving past every car dealership in that particular city. That's how a hiring committee can forget itself.

So a little bit of, a little bit of history, um, where did all of this come from? And I'm going to argue that, that all of this really came from a paradigm that is now about a hundred and some odd years old, that, that's really based in the industrial revolution in manufacturing and tourist economics in how we defined productivity, right, right. Um but more than that, it comes from this, the sort of North American culture of self-reliance, and I use self-reliance differently than I use independence, because to me, they're two separate concepts and they mean two separate things. In North America, we're very self-reliant, um, and, and so, so the notion of not being self-reliant, the notion of asking for supports to be able to do something, is very counter-cultural. But we've also set up the system that says, if you need help, it's okay to ask for it; while at the same time, frowning upon anyone who asks for help, because that, that's what we do in, in the context of, of North American culture. Um if I had more time I, I'd soapbox about that at greater length and we could debate it from a philosophical perspective, but let's really talk about the reality of the lived experience, because everything that I just described to you, um, is, is predicated on disability not being as diverse as disability really is. So, so, so let's talk about, let's talk about that.

Diversity, first of all there's the issue of onset. As I mentioned, disability can be a congenital disability, can be acquired in childhood, or early adulthood. Disability can be acquired, um, in someone whose working-age, disability can be acquired as you age. And, again the vast majority of lived experiences with disabilities are-- the person who does not have a lived experience, has an employment history, acquires a lived experience, and has to deal with the consequences in, in terms of their job. For somebody who, who loses their eyesight while, while having an employment history, they'll often lose their job. And then they have to re-skill or up-skill and, and then figure out what they're going to do. And, and how to go back. And then, lots of people, if this happens over the age of 50, lots of people will simply say, 'you know what, I'm done, I'm going to take early retirement,' and be done with it, right. Um and and so, so it's, it's worth it to note that when we talk about age of onset, it actually qualitatively matters what the age of onset is.

In this conversation, we also need to talk about context, because typically we refer to disability as a bit of a static construct in terms of permanent disabilities, but that's not true. We have temporary disabilities, we have episodic disabilities, we have progressive disabilities, we have situational disabilities, and all of those are going to play into a conversation, alongside that age of onset piece. We also have apparent and non-apparent disabilities, um, and, and what's on the slide currently is the, the paradigm of what we consider apparent, which is basically physical and mobility and some hearing and all of seeing. Um, and then we have non-apparent disabilities, which would be other hearing disabilities, neurodiversity ,chronic conditions, mental health, learning disabilities, developmental disabilities-- many of them, not all of them, and so on. The problem is that, that's a false paradigm, it doesn't work. And it doesn't work because of this thing called assistive technology.

And so, so what is assistive technology? Assistive technology is any device that facilitates a person with a disability doing daily tasks. So not just specialized devices, any device. A smartphone is a piece of assistive technology, right. Um, associated apps are piece, are pieces of assistive technology, but then, when you get to that point, you say, well everyone uses a smartphone, yeah everyone uses assistive technology. But assistive technology helps persons with disabilities. No, assistive technology can help anybody, right. Assistive technology is used when needed, not necessarily something that's used all the time, right.

So, so, so who is assistive technology being used by, and when is assistive technology being used? The broadest definition re-conceives assistive technology in a very different way from how assistive technology was conceived in 1981, right. Just to pick a year, because the 1980s conception of assistive technology was specialized devices used all the time by persons with lived experience with disabilities. So then, this is Mahadeo's definition. You're, you're not going to find this in a textbook, but I, I will tell you, it's, it's my definition, I, I talk about it in these presentations all the time. An apparent disability becomes apparent when somebody is using an assistive device, aid, person, dog, technology in a manner that helps them carry out daily tasks, in a way that is obvious to an observer. That's what's making disabilities apparent.

So let's talk about a different disability framework, then, where our lived experience is modulated by age of onset, context, severity, use of assistive technology, and the environment around us, right. So then, let's come back and ask the question, what's wrong with disclosure? And we, we'll just acknowledge nothing is technically wrong with it, but we do need to understand the hidden assumptions and biases associated. So, so number one, disclosure is, 'I'm asking for help,' the hidden philosophy here, again, is if, if you need help, it's okay to ask for it, but in practice the question is, well why do you need help? Disclosure is, I have to tell you about my disability, not the legal requirement. The legal requirement is accommodation need. In practice, those two things are conflated in people's minds all the time, so that leads to the medicalization of the conversation. Disclosure is putting the person with the disability in charge of the conversation, the intent here is a person- centered approach. In practice, a person with a disability is at the center of that legitimization effort, or that justification that, that justification effort. A person with a disability will feel on the spot, been there, done that, felt on the spot, hot on, under the colour, very stressful, not easy. Disclosure is also making the need obvious, the principle that goes behind this is, one should-- that's, that's my timer going off, telling me I should stop talking in five minutes-- um, the principle behind this is never assume the person with a disability knows themselves and their needs the best. The reality of this is that that's not always true, because again, context matters.

I, I had a mentoring conversation with a postsecondary student before this call, where he, he literally said to me, I don't know what I don't know. I'm in my first year of post-secondary, how am I supposed to figure out what I need, when I've never been in this environment before? Um and, and the reality of course, on top of that, is accessibility supports can be denied or watered down due to a lack of understanding and/or consultation. So what's going on then, what's going on is, we're, we're using the same words, but we're having two different conversations happening at the same time. One by the employer, and one by the the worker applicant.

Let's also ask the question, what's wrong with accommodations? Because there is something wrong with accommodations, uh, accommodations are transactional. The employment rate of persons with disabilities, we know, is significantly lower than the overall population. I will tell you having gotten into the meat of. of the Canadian Survey on Disability data myself, and, and dug around, um, without just relying on, on the data sources that, that CSD, that, that Stats Can publishes, this is influenced by disability type. It's influenced by severity. It's influenced by number of disabilities. It's influenced by age of onset. It's influenced by all sorts of things.

Accessible employment is often considered in this transactional mode of accessibility supports, and negotiated between the employer and the employee. There's a successful use of accessibility supports, so that does not mean that the worker is actually going to be successful in their role. Why is that, that is because we work in an interactional ecosystem with a whole bunch of other people who have attitudes toward disability, and who have attitudes toward accessibility and accommodations. We work with our manager, manager, we work with our teammates, we work with our peers, we work with our direct reports, we work with internal stakeholders, and, and collaborators, external stakeholders and collaborators. Um, we, we work with customers and clients, we work with our leadership, but we also use a bunch of things. We use finance software, we use HR software, we use collaboration software--like Microsoft Teams, we use meeting platforms-- like Microsoft Teams, we use third party software.

We use things that we need to do our job, job specific tools. We use, um, online learning management systems, we use training materials, um, we use the built environment, including furniture, including lighting, including acoustics--we use it. And so, how our accessibility supports, or accommodations, interact with all of these things matters, right. And how people interact with our accessibility supports or accommodations matters. But those don't get taken into account in the conversation, so, so accommodations are not sufficient by themselves. They're designed to facilitate successful completion of job tasks. But we've got this major interactional barrier and usage barrier that's often not considered in the provision of accessibility supports, and that boils down to interactions with people, technology, space, and resources.

All of that leads me to tell you, I would argue, that there are seven barriers to effective accessibility supports in the workplace. Hence the title of the book that we're going to write. Um, one of those is lived experience with disability is not one size fits all. The second is that policy and application don't always line up. The third is that the persons who came up with duty to accommodate probably never had to use it. The fourth is that disclosure is person centered, the requestor is at the core of the conversation, but also the core of the legitimization of their need. Disclosure and trust get conflated, that's number five, workers do this, job applicants do this, hiring managers do this, right. Disclosure doesn't always work is number six. And then the seventh is accommodations alone are insufficient, even when they're working.

So this is, this is me saying this, as a society, we've become very good at building in how to bolt accessibility on, right. So, so accessibility should be built in, and we've done that by building in a process that reactively bolts it on everywhere, which frankly is not great.

So, so in the last one and a half minutes, uh, what can we do about this? First of all, I think we can teach job applicants and workers how to navigate the system better, um, we can, we can move away from teaching usability first language to talking about disclosing functional need, because that seems to work better. Um, we can reinforce a disclosing, when, when not necessary is not lying. Um, we can, we can make sure that, that the moral that we usually tell people, which is, 'if you disclose, you control the conversation'-- we actually say, 'that's not true, disclosure is not controlling the conversation, it's ceding the conversation to the other party.' We need to teach people to read the room better, and we need we need to teach people to understand the Morin test, and then themselves apply it.

Are there alternatives? Yes. One is yes by default, another is accessibility passports, but the third, and the one that I want to talk about for a brief moment, is Universal Design in the workplace, right. We want to move away from the space where we do accommodations at work, to where we build a workplace that is accessible by design. Um, and then from there, we can get into a workplace that is truly constructed to be anti-ableist and anti-disablist.

Universal design, very briefly, is a set of environmental solutions designed to maximize inclusion of the greatest number of persons within the workplace environment. It is not one size fits all, but that is a very common misperception. There are a few models of universal design that exist. There's the Physical Universal Design model that, um, that was um developed in 1991, applicable to space and environments, including virtual. Uh, related to that was the Universal Design of Instruction model, which is applicable to professional development. Um, differentiated from that is a model called The Universal Design for Learning model which is applicable to communication and and engagement. Um, I, and, uh, and Anley, and a few others, about eight years ago, developed, uh, a Cultural Universal Design model that was applicable to policies and practices, um, in uh, in, in education settings is where it started, but we've, we've since then, uh, through the work of the CNIB research team, evolved it into Universal Design for Workplaces.

Does universal design eliminate the need for accommodations, frankly probably not, rather it minimizes the need to ask. Universal design if done right, does come from an anti-able mindset and manifests as accessible by design, where, uh everyone has equal opportunity to participate and engage meaningfully in the workplace setting, which is really what we're after. And so, I'm going to leave you with this question, which is, can we change how we work? And invite questions and discussion, thank you.

Rebecca Gewurtz:
Sorry, thank you so much for that presentation Mahadeo, um, we are now gonna open, the Q&A has been open, and I encourage everyone, uh, to, to type in their questions. If you are new to this Zoom platform, there is a Q&A button at the bottom of your screen, and if you click on it a box will open up where you can type your question. Um, so there's already one question in the, uh, Q&A, um, and I guess it gets to the, the nuts and bolts here around the timing of the disclosure. And so, um, the question is, 'should we, we include reference to disability in, in cover letters and resum�s, um, around supports needed?

Mahadeo Sukhai:
So that is a great question, I, I think there's some circumstances where that's advantageous. So for example if, if you're applying for a job, um, where your lived experience is an asset, um, or you're applying for a job where, where you're, you're going to be working for, for example, example a disability serving organization in, in the non-profit or, or public sectors, then you know what, it, it's beneficial to do that. I would never, I would never actually recommend disclosing the accessibility support requirements in a cover letter. I always think that's better for a conversation.

Um, I, I think, I think there are circumstances where a, an upfront disclosure in a cover letter, where you're arguing that, that this is something that helps you because it's part of, part of what makes you, you well suited to do the job, then sure you can, you can put that in. I think in. in most circumstances, um, that's, that's a very specific use case that I just described, so in most circumstances, I don't actually think it's beneficial. I think either you could get screened out by somebody who doesn't know any better, or you could get included, but for the wrong reasons, right. Then they're not really looking at you in terms of your job, they're, or the job they want you to do, they're looking at you for, for something else, um, or it's going to cause a problem with, with whatever artificial intelligence mediated, um, filtration is going on on the back end, to help out people in culture. So I, I would I, I would be very, very cautious about doing that, um, and, and encourage doing it only when you're sure it's actually going to help you.

Rebecca Gewurtyz:
Thank you, um, so the next question is around how, um, how would you suggest that companies overcome issues, um, um with a portion of the workforce who might not be as accepting of individuals with a requirement for accommodations?

Mahadeo Sukhai:
Um, that's a great question, the very crass answer is wait until they all retire, but, um, but, but I mean, to be fair, that's, that's also, that's also not necessarily going to help matters. Um, there's, there's some really interesting data out there um that, that shows that the members of generation Z, actually have what I would categorize as the poorest attitudes toward disability. Um, and, and as, as members of generation Z start to acquire work experience, and, and, and get into positions of authority, and, and become in, and hiring manager positions, then, then you know they're not going to retire for a while, so, so, so it becomes, how, how do we, how do we sort of navigate through, and, and deal with, um, deal with negative attitudes that come from younger people, as opposed to negative attitudes that ,that might have been from an older generation, um, who, who are closer to retirement.

Um, the, the, philosophical answer to the question is exposure. I, I think, I think it's easy to, it's easy to persist in, um, in preconceptions. It's easy to persist in, uh, this notion of, um, of you know, I I don't really think a person with a disability can work here, kind of thing, until you actually are working side-by-side with a person with a disability. We, we actually have some really nice data, um, that showed that the best perceptions of competency, uh, of persons with disabilities in the general public, came from people who worked with persons with disabilities in their, in their jobs.

During Covid, people were working from home a lot of the time, that didn't actually work the same way, because you weren't, you weren't next to somebody the same way that you were pre-Covid. So, so, so Covid actually did a number on, on that particular, on that particular set of attitudes, um, and it'll be interesting now that we're, we're kind of officially in a post-Covid space, to see if that will rebound over time. Um, so, so arguably, I would say exposure, uh, is, is one of the best ways to, to really address that attitudinal barrier in the workplace.

Rebecca Gewurtz:
Thank you so much, so um, a couple questions now about, uh, universal design and the first one in this area is, uh, can you explain this idea of yes by default?

Magadeo Sukhai:
Um, um yeah, so, so let me, let me tackle that one first, if that's okay, um, so that we're doing one question at a time. So um, so, so yes by default effectively takes the the onus of legitimization away from the person with the lived experience. So, so right now, if, if Emile is my boss, and I go to Emile, and, and I say, 'I need um, I need a large screen, and I need screen magnification software, and I need these other things,' um, Emile is obligated under the way the duty to accommodate is setup, to say, 'okay'. Well, why do you need all of these things, because I didn't say I have a visual impairment, I said I need all of these things, right. Um, and, and so, so Emil is obligated to ask why, and then we go through the process of, of providing documentation.

Yes by default says, 'okay, I'm, I'm going to say yes, we, we'll, we'll find a way to get you what you need. Now help me to understand that better.' So, so it actually changes the middle part of that process a little bit. There is still a duty to inform, but the duty to inquire actually changes so, so that is what yes by default is.

Rebecca Gewurtz:
Great, um, so uh, I'm just going to, um, ask another question first, first, um, before going back to universal design. Um, you spoke about reading the room, and um, which I'm wondering, if you could, uh, comment on how we can better support cases where the persons with disabilities may not have the capacity to articulate their, their views? So if you could say a little bit more about reading the room, and what that might entail.

Mahadeo Sukhai:
So reading the room is actually a really, really difficult concept, right, because, because you, you can have, you can have scenarios where I, as a person with a lived experience, um, will, will have difficulty sort of articulating my perspective and, and how I know I can do the job. But you can also have the the perspective of, all right, um, 93% of human communication is nonverbal, uh, and a number of individuals with lived experience, with disabilities, won't have access to that 93%, right. So, so, so reading the room actually involves understanding what people are saying in the, in the interview, and understanding whether there's any subtext behind it, right.

So, so, I'll give you, I'll give you a, a concrete example, um, let's, let's say again, and now I'm going to pick on Rebecca. So, so, I'm a job applicant and, and Rebecca is interviewing me for a position on her research team. And I come into, I come into Rebecca's office, um, using a white cane, right, and I've got my, my Braille display device hanging, um, in a satchel on my hip, right. Um, and, and now Rebecca wouldn't do this, because I, I know Rebecca knows much differently and, and much better, but, but somebody who would be in Rebecca's position, who doesn't know, would turn around and say to me, 'well, thank you for coming in, tell me how you got here today?' And, and then the conversation actually becomes more about the, the ability for a person with a white cane to navigate, than it becomes about the ability of that person to do the job at hand. And, and the person answers the questions and feels really good that they can answer the questions, and demonstrate confidence, but at the end of the day, the interviewer says, 'I did not get anything about this person being able to do the job, so we're not going to hire them.' And that's actually because the interviewer never asked any of the right questions and, and so, so reading the room in that context means being able to, to sense that what's going on is, is not what should be going on in the interview, and no matter how good the questions are making you feel, because you can demonstrate your confidence, you need to be able to redirect the conversation to, 'well, can we can we talk about the job now, you know I'm here to talk about the job. I want to, I want to be able to tell you how I can do the job, not how I can get to work.' Yeah, yeah, good point, um, okay, um, by the way Francis, I know fully well I didn't fully answer your question, but we can, we can take that one offline, because I, I think it's, there's, there's a much longer answer.

Rebecca Gewurtz:
Uh, yeah, there's, there's, there, I'm, I am, uh, kind of skipping some questions that can be answered more readily offline, like some of the, there's some ask for references to some of the definitions, which I think can be addressed, um, I'm wondering if you could elaborate on what you mean by conflating disclosure and trust?

Mahadeo Sukhai:
Um, so, so, I invite you to think back to what I, what I said when I was talking about the studies that Johannes and I were doing. So, so hiring intent increased upon disclosure, right, but feelings of the hiring manager toward trust toward, toward the candidate, as it related to trustworthiness, and warmth and competence also went up. So the hiring manager felt that I was more trustworthy, because I disclosed. The hiring manager felt warmer to me, because I disclosed. The hiring manager felt I was more competent, because I disclosed, right.

So, so we're conflating disclosing with being trustworthy, right. And, and the thing is, that the hiring managers in those experiments did it, but, but persons with disabilities do it all the time, um, so I will, I will often get the following comment, uh, 'I'm a guide dog user, and I go into the interview and, and I mean, clear I am a guide dog user, but if I don't talk about my my sight loss, am I not being trustworthy?' And my usual response is, 'your guide dog is disclosing for you, right, um, and you don't need to bring it up, because if you bring it up, the employer gets to ask questions. If you don't bring it up, the employer legally can't ask questions.' If, if they know what they're doing, right, um but, but there's there's this preconception among some within the disability community that, that, that you have to be open and you have to be honest and you have to be trustworthy, um, and if you don't disclose you're not being trustworthy, because you're withholding information that the employer needs to know.

And, and I think that's, that's actually the problem, because then what, what everybody has done, what the hiring managers have done, what, what the persons with disabilities have done, and frankly what, what the employment preparedness folks have done, is, is you've put those two things together, and you've made disclosure equal trust. But they're not right.

Rebecca Gewurtz:
Okay, so I think we have time for maybe one or two more questions, so, um, some of the, some of the questions, um, will need to be answered separately, but I think there is a couple questions around, um, supporting employers and hiring managers who come from different backgrounds, who have different knowledge, and um, um, insight into, uh, universal design and disability confidence, or, or, working with, um, hiring people with disabilities, and how do you support them in their journey? What kinds of supports could be offered to employers and managers?

Mahadeo Sukhai:
So, so I mean, it depends on how early we can get people. So, so I, I every so often, will do a guest lector-ship in, um, in HR courses, on what I just did here today, um, and it, it's, it's a half an hour conversation that, that opens some, opens some minds and raises some eyebrows, because it's, it's definitely not the way that people think about disclosure and duty to accommodate. Um, I, I, I, I, think duty to accommodate works for the employer precisely because it's, it's, it's a risk mitigation strategy. Um, but there's, there's a legitimate question about how effective it is for everybody else, um, and, and so, so what, what to do in a space like this is, I think, continue to build resources, I think. Continue to, um, continue to, to train, continue to educate, make sure that, that all hiring managers in, in all companies understand what they're supposed to do in the context of an interview setting where disclosure is, is most likely to happen, right. Um, make sure that, that, that the attitudinal sort of, 'you didn't tell me about this before, so you're no longer trustworthy, thing, like that's, that's not, that's, that's not great. I mean is, and I'm, I'm going to use an example here, um, that, that comes from being a, a recent parent.

My, my, my daughter is 18 months old, um, but if ,if my wife went to her, her boss, you know, five months into the pregnancy and said, 'I'm pregnant, I'm due in four months.' Is, is she suddenly not trusting, trustworthy because she didn't, she didn't acknowledge her pregnancy sometime in the first trimester? Like, that doesn't make sense, right. If, it, if, if, if it doesn't make sense in one context, why should it make sense in a different context, right. Pregnancy is not a health condition, right, pregnancy is pregnancy disability, is not a health condition, not always, right. Um, and, and so, so let's, let, let's, let's learn to talk about these conversations through a lens of, um, of, of respect. Where we're not attaching, um, we're not attaching sentiment, we're not attaching, um, we're not attaching trust, we're not attaching legitimacy, we're not attaching openness to this, this issue of, do I have to tell you something that at this point, you don't need to know, right.

Rebecca Gewurtz:
Thank you so much, um, I wonder if we have to leave it at that? I think so, and let you have final words of advice, Mahadeo, for the way forward.

Mahadeo Sukhai:
Um, you know I, I, I believe, uh, and, and I, I will, I will put the employment technical committee chair hat on for a moment and, and invite Emile, who was also on the committee, to, to agree or disagree. Um, I, I believe that, that the way forward is an inclusive workplace that's built that way from the ground up. I believe there's a way to do that, um, I believe there's probably many ways to do that. But the way to do it isn't to say, 'we want this to work for you, so come tell me what you need and now make it happen,' right. There, there are things that we can all do that will demonstrate commitment to accessibility and inclusion in the workplace that don't involve reinforcing a system that exists because of a use case that is no longer the only use case that it needs to exist for.

Emile Tompa:
Makes sense, definitely like that as a good way to close. Thank you, so, um, we are close to the end of our time together, together. Thank you Mahado for a provocative and informative session.

For the audience, note as I mentioned earlier, that we are recording this session and, as well as previous sessions that we've held in this webinar series, and they'll be available on the idea website later this Spring at www.vraie-idea.ca, and they'll also be available on our YouTube channel.

We will be back for the next IDEA Speaker Series on Friday, March 22nd, so next month. Um, the speaker will be Marie LaBerge from the University of Montreal. In the meantime, do reach out to us at info@vraie-idea.ca if you have any questions or suggestions, and do follow up with us on our various social media accounts. Thank you, and have a pleasant rest of day and weekend ahead.

00:02
You can't spell inclusion without a D, the podcast that explores the power of inclusion and why disability is an important part of the workplace diversity and inclusion conversation. Produced by the Ontario Disability Employment Network, with your hosts, Jeanette Campbell and Dean Askin.

00:26
Hi there and welcome back to another season of You Can't Spell Inclusion Without a D. This is episode 19. I'm Dean Askin here with you as we kick off season five of the show. And hello and welcome back from Me Too. I'm Jeanette Campbell and back with you at the other mic. Also back for this episode of 2024 at their respective mics are the two guests who are with us on our 2023 season opener.

00:53
That's right, Jeanette. They're back to give us an update on year one of the inclusive design for employment access initiative, or IDEA for short. Now, if you missed our original conversation with Dr. Emile Thompa and Dr. Rebecca Goertz about IDEA, that's episode eight. And a quick recap. IDEA is a six year research project being done with $9 million in federal funding under Canada's new Frontiers in Research Fund.

01:23
can be more inclusive for people in this country who have a disability. It's been almost a year since IDEA officially launched, and we wanted to find out what's been happening since then. So back with us are Dr. Emile Tompa and Dr. Rebecca Goertz. They're leading the IDEA initiative. Dr. Emile Tompa is a senior scientist at the Institute for Work and Health in Toronto and an associate professor in the Department of Economics at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

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He's also an assistant professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. And Dr. Rebecca Gortz is an occupational therapist and associate professor in the School of Rehabilitation Science at McMaster University. Now, Jeanette, I'm pretty sure this is going to be another conversation with Emile and Rebecca that'll have our listeners glued to their speakers or their earbuds, because these two are both just so passionate about what they're doing with IDEA, and it...

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really comes across. Emile and Rebecca, welcome back to You Can't Spell Inclusion Without a D. Well, it's a delight to be back. We're really excited to tell you about what we've been up to over the last year. Yeah, I can't believe it's in some ways, I can't believe it's only been a year. We've been so busy and we were excited to share this, uh, our journey with you. Well,

02:45
That's a great way for us to start the conversation then, because that's exactly what we were hoping to start talking about. So, Emil, let's start with you. What's been happening on the IDEA Initiative since we talked to you about a year ago? Oh my gosh, where to start? It's been a very crazy busy, very exciting year, actually. So quite a number of things happening over this last year. I should maybe just start up with our launch that we did in May.

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of last year, May 2023, was a day-long event, which was held in person. We also had an option of joining virtually, and we had an amazing lineup of speakers. I just found them so inspiring. People telling us about their lived experiences, some of our partners telling us about the things they're doing in their space, a number of our academics who are talking about the kind of things that they're going to be doing over this.

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the year ahead kind of thing. So it was a really lovely day to kind of team build, tell the world about what we're doing, hear people's stories and move forward in this initiative and let everybody know that we're here and we're here to make change, I guess, ultimately, in a partnered co-design way that's really reflective of the team spirit that we need to move forward and to move the needle ahead in inclusive employment.

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And Rebecca, what about you? What's been happening for you on the initiative since we talked? Well, Emile and I work together very closely and the launch was certainly a full team effort. But beyond the launch and well, after the launch and all the amazing speakers, we've continued to engage

04:38
with many community organizations and individuals across Canada. The hubs have continued to do amazing work and we have a large roster of projects underway. Many evidence-based efforts and research and with products that are coming soon.

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So, you know, this is a long-term initiative and we're expecting some of those early products to be ready, become ready for release shortly. The other thing that's been really exciting is the engagement of students across Canada, diverse students across Canada who've become really interested in the work of IDEA and the idea of interdisciplinary partnered research.

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And these are students of all levels from undergraduate to graduate students, and we're starting to recruit postdoctoral students as well. So really exciting to see that engagement and that building up of capacity in this area. Yeah, I'm glad you're mentioning the postdocs because those calls are still open for a little bit and they're really important parts of our capacity building students in general. We really want to...

06:04
Forge the way forward for a new generation of academics doing work of the sort that we're doing that's very partner driven, that's community based, that's really action oriented, you know, knowledge to practice that really focuses on facilitating uptake of that knowledge in the field. So the post-docs are a good way of building up some of that capacity. We have two of them that I'll do a shout out about. One of them is with Odin actually, which is a post-doctoral fellow that's

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In honor of our former Lieutenant Governor David Onley, that we are looking to fill a space where a person can do some really great quantitative work in this space around understanding the benefits of inclusion across organizations, across systems, across Canada. And then the second one that's in honor of Marcia Riu, a colleague of ours.

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was part of our Center for Research on Work Disability Policy. So that postdoc is really focusing on qualitative research and the really deep roots we need to understand about what's happening in this space, I mean the field and synthesizing that knowledge to get a good handle on the best practices going forward for organizations to be more inclusive. So those are two of our current calls that are open for people interested in this kind of work.

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I want to jump in here for a minute. And you've kind of sort of touched on a few of the things that stick out in your mind. Are there, you know, are there other things that are real highlights that are like, you know, uber exciting over the past year? Okay. Well, there's quite a bit as my list is quite long. I actually tried to write it out and I got exhausted just putting together the list. And we, we launched our speaker series last fall as well. So we have a monthly speaker come and talk about what they're doing in this space. We've started off with some of our key.

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Co-investigators will open it up to others who are working in our partnership group and beyond to have an ongoing dialogue with our audience about some of the great stuff that's happening in the area of inclusive employment, really focused on knowledge to practice type initiatives. I'm involved in a number of best practice guides in the form of standards as well, so some of those have been out for public review.

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One of them is with the CSA Group on ETIA in the trades and internship programs. Another one is about inclusive employment with accessibility standards in Canada. So I think those will be out sometime this year for organizations to pick up and run with. So I think that's a really good part of what we're doing is building up that knowledge in best practice guidance that's been standardized for broad application. Rebecca, anything else stick out in your mind over the year?

08:49
Yeah, for me what sticks out is the engagement that we've been doing across the sector with organizations of different sizes and the different ways that just being able to think about the different ways that we can work with these organizations and in some cases it's just talking about the work that they're doing and in some cases we're able to really get involved in support.

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some of the some evaluation of some of the initiatives that they're doing or help them build capacity and look at scaling across the sector or conducting different types of reviews that can inform the work that they're doing. So that kind of engagement that's been leading our process has been really exciting and to see the idea of the idea of social innovation

09:47
by different people with different backgrounds. To me, that's been really exciting and a real privilege and opportunity, yeah. Might I also mention the project we're doing with Ontario Federation of Labour, where we're doing a train the trainer workshop on inclusive design. And this is a collaboration, as I mentioned with Ontario Federation of Labour, we've done a couple of pilots last year, and we're looking to scale that up.

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Ontario with all of the constituencies that are part of the Ontario Federation of Labour. I think that's a really important way to get people up to speed on on how to do inclusive by design approaches in the workplaces and our colleagues at the Ontario Federation of Labour are really keen on making this happen with their constituency so we're really looking forward to continuing those pilots and scaling up that initiative this year. So

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What have been some of the challenges of making all these things happen over the last year? Because this is all new. You're working with hubs across the country and everybody's got to do coordinated things. What are the challenges of it all? Yeah, maybe I could, I could start for me, one of the challenges and, uh, you know, Emile has a bit more experience than I do have these large initiatives. Um, and, and I'm a bit new to this. So for me, the real challenge has been

11:14
I think there's two major challenges. One has been really, as I mentioned, there's so many opportunities and it's such a privilege to be invited into some of these organizations to learn about the work that they're doing. And it's been really a challenge to be able to think what can we take on? Like we wanna get some stuff done here and there's a real risk of spreading ourselves too thin and obviously ideas not the only...

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research initiative in this space. So what makes sense for IDEA to prioritize and really run with, and what are the other ways in which we can support the other initiatives? So really sort of sorting that out and making at times some difficult decisions, but also decisions that are for the best of both IDEA and the various organizations. And then I think one of the challenges for doing

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partner-based research that is focused on knowledge to action is, you know, staying in the realm of research, knowing that there's other people in the space doing some of the consultancy work and the service provision work and making sure that we really sort of think what is the research that, what is the research skills that we offer as an organization.

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and differentiating ourselves in that way about what the value added of idea is. So I think we've been successful at doing that, but we've had to be very intentional in the work that we do. Yeah, I agree. The biggest challenge for me too has been just juggling all the various competing demands on our time.

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and triaging, prioritizing, what do we do first, what do we park for later, that kind of thing. So there's a lot of decisions that we have to weigh on a regular basis with our team to make sure we're hitting the right notes at the right time. The other part of that too is the talent recruitment part of it. We have so many demands in our projects for students, for post-docs, for others to help support the development of these projects. And just doing that talent.

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takes time as well. We've got a great roster of folks at our national office and on some of the projects that we've got up and running, really great teams, but that's a constant for us is like the talent-recruiting part of it. There's an investment there as well for us to find the right people. We're really prioritizing people with lived experience as well, so we really try to walk the talk. And that part is an important part.

14:06
The work we do is a reflection of the teams we've built up, and we want to make sure we do this in the best way possible. And you know, that's such an interesting challenge, because it's actually something that people don't really talk about a lot. We talk about the challenge of the work of the project, but it's interesting and really informative, I think, for people to understand some of the challenges of putting together these teams that are going to be able to do this incredible work.

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and being able to source that talent and source it in such a meaningful and intentional way. But you know, I want to touch on another thing you were talking about, you know, that you've got things like the speaker series that you've launched, the work you're doing with the Federation of Labour and the train the trainer on inclusive design. So I'm wondering, what are some of some of the key things that you're learning right now about employers?

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workplaces, workspaces that is related to disability inclusion? Um, I can go first. I think we're learning a lot is the answer. We're learning, um, you know, how to navigate, um, partnering with organizations that are complex and ever-changing, um, that, um, you know, we, we,

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how to leverage our network to really get some of this work done, that things can get stuck at different points for various reasons, despite everybody's good intentions. So those are some of the challenges we're learning about and how to work through. I think we're also learning that there's a lot of really exciting stuff out there. I don't think I really realized how much...

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how much innovation is happening on the ground and that much of the work that IDEA can do and the value that we can offer is beginning to showcase that work and through research. And so that's been some of the stuff that I've learned about.

16:27
Yeah, I hear you, Rebecca, and I agree. There's so many interesting things happening out there. Very inspiring to see all of the different facets of this space that I didn't know existed because we're being approached quite regularly by organizations within Canada and internationally as well about wanting to learn more about what we're doing, wanting to partner and things like that. And it's really interesting to see how many layers. Most recently, I was approached by an organization from the US that's...

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just started up a couple of years ago, it was a group of several colleagues, academics from Harvard who developed a not-for-profit that's developing indicators for workplaces to use to measure progress in this space and related spaces and make them available and standardize them across the US, I guess, for them and internationally as well. And I was just thinking that that's such an important part of it because what gets measured gets attended to, as we all know, it's an-

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saying that many people use, but we don't always have good measures to identify where the gaps are, what we're doing well, what we need to prioritize, and so they're trying to develop some standardized ones because standardization is another important part of measurement because you want to compare yourself sometimes with your peers, so you want to see what are sort of the...

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averages in your field in certain spaces and be certain that what you're comparing is a meaningful comparison. So I thought, wow, that's a great space to be in. And we were continuing the conversation with them about how we can support the process. So there's always new things like that arising that we thought, oh, wow, here's another great thing we could get involved in and help support or promote. And it's a complex field. And the other...

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element that Rebecca mentioned too that is a really critical thing is just dealing with the complexity of organizations and the different actors in the space, particularly large organizations. And some of that takes a bit of time and investment to understand how they operate. We're doing a couple of big projects with the federal government that have many layers to them. And so we really want to understand how they operate and how what we're doing can weave into building more capacity for them.

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internally and making sure it works with where they're at currently and where they want to go in their journey. And that's a very customized product, so it takes time and investment of both the research part of it and also the facilitating uptake part of it can be a large investment of people time. And sometimes you don't realize that the front end when you get into some of these projects and you think, okay, well.

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We can add this new project on it becomes bigger than you imagine and it requires a lot more resources. In some ways we need to think about having that excess capacity a little bit at the margin so that we can build in these extra layers into what we're doing to make sure what we're doing is the best possible going forward. Yeah, well that makes me think about Rebecca's earlier point around the challenges about

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you know, really just understanding exactly what it is that you can take on because you do run that risk of spreading yourself too thin. Because you're just uncovering so much information and in your so many people are reaching out and and there's so many opportunities to engage and go in different directions with this so that's really exciting. I'm wondering, is there anything that you've learned so far that you weren't expecting to learn yet.

20:08
I think there's a couple things for me. One was I don't think I fully appreciated how much already exists. Like I think sometimes when we're proposing to do work, we say, okay, we're gonna create this, we're gonna create that. And I see students doing that all the time. And how important it is to actually do an environmental scan or a scan of what already exists because we don't need, there's so much to do.

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we don't need to waste time duplicating efforts. And yeah, so I think that an appreciation for how much already exists is really important. Now there's reasons sometimes that we're not aware of what already exists because it hasn't been scaled or it hasn't been disseminated or perhaps it even hasn't been evaluated, but.

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not having to start from scratch is a really interesting, a really important point in research that I think isn't emphasized. I don't think I fully appreciated how important that step is. Yeah, so I think that's number one there for me. That's a big one.

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is understanding how much is already out there. And so that's what a great lesson to learn in year one, not four years down the road. Exactly. Emil, what about you? Yeah, no, but I just want to add to what Rebecca says and we're very much aware of it in some respects that we don't know what we don't know. And part of what we're doing at the front end, actually, Alec Farquhar, our lead for engagement is doing a scan with us on looking at...

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promising practices that organizations are currently doing. It's low-level stuff maybe that's happening that we don't know about that we could consider generalizing to different contexts and seeing how well it works in different types of contexts. So that's part of one of our foundational projects where we're working with industry to understand where they're at, some of their challenges too, but also learning about what they find is working well for them so that we can pick up and run with that rather than reinventing those kinds of things. But in terms of...

22:27
One of the things I feel I'm learning is about the challenges of doing very accessible websites and social media more broadly. We're about to launch our permanent website. We have a temporary landing page up currently. And we really want to walk the talk as we try to do with all of our work, but making sure it's accessible as possible using the latest standards around WK 2.1 AAA to be sure that all the...

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most up-to-date features are there. There's quite a bit of involvement, investment, of people time and learning as well about the different options you have to entertain to make sure it's a site that is accessible for different needs. And so we've been putting a lot of time into that on almost a daily basis. We have meetings to make sure we're reaching all of our targets because we're trying to get this launched for April of this year.

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And so, you know, that was a learning curve for us, I think. We had an external group develop the foundations of it, and then the rest of it were doing it in-house before we launched, doing a soft launch in early April, we're hoping. Emile, you made me think of the entire episode we did last season on the show about making, you know, making web accessibility and the web accessible for all. You know, you mentioned a couple of minutes ago that you've been...

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getting contacted by other organizations wanted to be involved, how easy or difficult has it been to get businesses involved in this initiative? Good question. Do you start? Sounds like you're about to say something, Rebecca. I think what I would say is that businesses, we have found that businesses and different employers are generally really interested.

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want to participate and want to engage, I think there are challenges and many organizations, especially in the post-pandemic labor market and the post-pandemic workplace, they have limited resources and limited time and despite intentions and dedication and a desire,

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sometimes that can be a challenge. And so to work with these organizations, we really have to sort of meet them where they're at and sort of figure out what makes sense. But I think in general, businesses, the idea of becoming an inclusive employer is very appealing. That's been my experience, but there are challenges to engagement for sure. Yeah.

25:18
Yeah, I would say that certain workplace stakeholders have come on board with quite a bit of excitement and energy, like the Ontario Federation of Labour, which I mentioned, federal and provincial governments as employers themselves, industry associations, we've also had service providers, community groups who work with employers coming forward, wanting to move forward in this space and partner with us. The employers themselves are a little bit more challenging, as Rebecca notes.

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given that they have limited time. But I'm not sure if we've gone that direction in as big a way as we're planning to going forward. We're just starting up doing piloting of resources in workplaces, so I think over this next year, we'll be coming full board with reaching out to employers about helping facilitate piloting some of these resources and tools that we're developing. And we'll have a better handle on some of the challenges in kind of finding.

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helping them find time to really move forward with some of their efforts that they very much want to do as they become inclusive employees, but carving out the space to help facilitate that kind of evaluation process that we feel is really important as part of our piloting. Well, we're probably gonna be up against that in a big way, I think, over this next year. If I could just add, I think we have an awareness of that, that there are certain workplaces that

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have more capacity to engage. And I think the public sector is an example of that. And people, employers that are in this space already, like service providers and disability organizations and so forth, even though we know the Canadian labor market tend to be made up of smaller businesses, I think we have to start where there's capacity.

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make sure that as we're building tools and resources, we think about their relevance to the smaller organization. So I think we always knew that that was going to be the case because we have an awareness of the reality of organizations. So I don't think that's been a huge surprise. I just think it's built into our process. So let's take a step back from that for a minute for our

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may not have heard our original conversation last season. And again, that was episode eight. For all the things you've said about the challenges that business face and the commitment that they have, why is the IDEA initiative so important overall? So well, employers in Canada, as Rebecca and I have mentioned too, they really want to improve their capacity to recruit, hire, and promote persons with disabilities. There's labor shortages.

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even ourselves, I mentioned that we're struggling to recruit talent. So being better at this is an important thing for organizations in order to be sustainable, to be productive. But they lack the skills and confidence. And that's where we've come into this space to think about how we, as a knowledge to practice initiative, can work with our partners to do co-design, to facilitate building up.

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the knowledge base through tools and resources that we will pilot test, evaluate, and scale up in the field. So we really focus on what we describe as demand-side capacity building, so helping employers be more inclusive in the way they recruit talent and retain talent. And that's sort of the angle that we're taking. In the past, a lot of effort's been put into skilling up workers, getting them job ready, which is important, but our focus, we feel is like...

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on the employer side because it's great to have workers ready and willing to take up jobs, but if the employers don't have the capacity for that uptake because they lack that confidence, that know-how of how to do that well kind of thing, we're always going to be finding that barrier that there's jobs just aren't out there, people aren't getting employed because the employers aren't up to speed on how to do this well. Rebecca, what do you think?

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I agree with everything that Emile has said. What I can maybe add is I think entering into this work at this time, the timing kind of, things kind of lined up because there's a real understanding of the importance of having an inclusive workplace where employers have the capacity to hire, retain and promote workers with different skills and backgrounds.

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And also I think the post pandemic workplace has been a real, in some ways, a bit of an opportunity to really rethink how people work together and how we can make these spaces and places and relationships more inclusive. So I think.

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That's really what the idea initiative is about, is trying to build on that momentum through research. Yeah, we're strong believers in knowledge to practice and also co-designing, working with our partners to find solutions, evaluate them, scale them up in a particular field across the country.

30:49
I think it really requires partnership. You know, as we mentioned earlier, there's so many people working in this space. We need to work together. If we're going to make change in a big way, and we would like to see Canada be a role model for other countries of inclusive employment practices, inclusive societies. And so working together with all the people in this space is absolutely a critical thing. But a strong belief in knowledge of practice and knowledge that we can then share with everybody.

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who's looking to make change. If you're at the workplace level, at the systems level, wherever you're at kind of thing, building up that knowledge for everybody to pick up and run with is really critical for us. So through our social media, through our website, we really wanna share whatever we develop with the public to make it available. There was something else we touched on in our original conversation, but I just wanna throw it out there again. What's the, do you think is the single most important

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message for businesses in all of this. Well, I would say, well, I'm sure Rebecca has something to add here too, but I would say it's not so complicated or costly. A lot of times we sense that there's an apprehension to go down this bit because they think it's going to be costly, that they don't have the know-how or the capacity to do it, so they shy away from it. And I would just say to the workplace stakeholders that it's not so complicated.

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You're not eating it alone too. There's so many great resources out there, stuff that we're developing, stuff that some of our partners have developed. Sometimes it's just being a bit more aware of what's out there and putting your best foot forward. You're not gonna solve all of your problems in one day. It's a continual improvement process, but you take a few steps to start off identifying maybe if you have recruitment challenges, how you can be more inclusive in your recruitment process.

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and then build it into other layers of your human resources system, mentorship and advancement of persons with disabilities. Thinking about a journey and where that starting point is and just going forward with it and seeing what's out there. There's people and resources and tools to help you on that journey. Yeah, and building on what Emile has said, because I agree with everything that has been said,

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The business case for hiring workers with disabilities and the positive impact that can have on an organization has been out there for a while. I think what we are saying is that, you know, there's a need to actually build capacity within the organization and that...

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organizations are already doing a lot of great things. They're not starting from scratch, but it's important to go through an intentional process of taking stock, what they're already doing. And when there is innovation, I think it's really important to really evaluate that and to share it. And as an organization, ideas about knowledge to action, and I...

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I think we want to eliminate this idea of these innovations happening across Canada in silence. We want them to be showcased and shared because as a society, as a country, as an economy, we want everyone to benefit from this built capacity that already exists and continue to build on that. So I think that would be...

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an important message to businesses is that we really want to celebrate their successes and build on that capacity. Exactly. And, you know, Rebecca, that sort of brings me to one of the next areas we wanted to unpack a little bit. And it's that, you know, this initiative is focused on rethinking and reshaping workplaces in Canada to make them more inclusive. But both of you have been talking about sort of, you know,

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Canada is a role model about the actual reach and the potential for this. And, you know, Emil, you said you're already being contacted, you know, from the US, I think you said it was Harvard, you know, reaching out to find out about this project and what it is you're doing and how to work together. So, you know, ultimately, do you think IDEA could make a global impact through sharing what it is that you're learning?

35:34
Yeah, we live in a global world for sure. Yeah, Emil, you go ahead first. No, no, no, we're both on the same page. Yeah, yeah, of course. I mean, I don't think we could not do that. I mean, the only way this is gonna work, not just the work we're doing, but the work we're all doing this space has to have an international reach because Canada is not in a siloed space. It's connected within the global economy. And so we really need to think about how

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what we do in Canada is connected with what others are doing in other countries. I mean, when we think about EDIA, equity, diversity, inclusion, accessibility in industry, well, we need to think about supply chains, right? And a lot of those supply chains cut across jurisdictional boundaries. It's, you know, procurement is one of the priority areas in the Accessible Canada Act. It's a key part of one of our guidance pieces within accessibility planning

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In fact, one of the next projects we're doing in one of the incubator hubs is guidance on EDIA in the supply chain because it's absolutely critical. You can't think about it as just being the things that your organization is doing, but all the people you connect with in your supply chain and your clients. It's really critical that we take a global perspective for this to really work well and be sustainable as well.

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Oftentimes, we're trying to connect it with other things that are happening in the international scene around sustainability, like the ESG model, everything about environmental issues, social issues, governance issues. That disability lens has to be part of those things because we can't do sustainability without being inclusive of the diversity of people in that market. It's just not a realistic option. You can't be environmental if you're not thinking about...

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the human condition and making sure that everybody has a place to participate and be included and belong, right? Also feeds into the governance notion as well, you know to be sustainable in your governance You need to think about community, right and you're the impact you have in your local community in your National community and in the global community. So I think we we just need to go down that space I think about how we don't tailor integrate with the broader

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international kind of economy and the reach that organizations have around the globe. So with all that inclusivity and reaching out and people interested in it, how can people and businesses and organizations get in touch with you about getting involved in the idea initiative? So pretty soon we're going to have a fully launched website that people can visit and

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and you know everything that we do is going to be available on the website and shared like the idea here is that things are shared widely and freely and without restriction. So I believe Emile do you have the website up in front of you? Yes, yeah I do well www.

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with an E at the end, dash idea dot CA. We also have a general email that people can reach out to called info at fray idea dot CA. And then we have a national office team that people can reach out to as well. Sabrina Chowdhury is our national manager S Chowdhury, C H A U D H R Y at IWH dot ON dot CA.

39:27
So there's various ways that people can connect with us. Our temporary landing page also has an option to subscribe to our newsletter and our social media platforms. We have a number of different social media platforms. So there's various ways that they can connect with us. The key thing is just reach out through our website, through our info at freyaidea.ca, email, and join our initiative in some way. Come to our webinar series.

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reach out to us about partnering or just forward all the materials that you come across on our website to your colleagues through your own social media platforms. We have LinkedIn, we have Macedon, we have X as well, so we have a number of different platforms that we're trying to connect with people in this space. So there's lots of good ways that people will be able to connect with you, a variety of different ways that they can get to you, and I love that you're saying, you know, share information with us.

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get involved, come to our speaker series, come and learn, come and participate, give us your resources and information too. Dean, I'm wondering, are we going to be able to post the contact information so that people will have an easier time getting in touch? We will definitely be putting all that contact information in the show notes and when the episode goes up and the social posts

40:55
They'll be mentioned there too Okay, that's super so we'll make sure people know how to find you. So, you know now this first year which has been Incredibly busy and engaging and exciting, you know now that this first year is pretty much behind you. What's next? What do you want to accomplish in? year to idea Yeah, I think we're at a really vital point an idea

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You know, we've built some of these networks, it's ongoing. We've done some of these scans, also ongoing. But I think what the next big milestone is going to be starting to release some of the tools developed in-house, sharing it, evaluating, looking at really beginning to translate new knowledge to

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to the field. And I think that's really where we're focused. And that's why the website is a critical platform to help us do that. Obviously, we're not just gonna be posting things on the website and hope that people come to it. We'll be much more actively translating tools and resources to the field.

42:20
Not all the tools and resources that we share actively will be developed in-house. Many will be through our partner organizations and IDEA will have various roles in that process. But, you know, I think that's really going to be an exciting time where we start really not only supporting organizations towards inclusion, but to actually say, and here's...

42:48
some tools that can help you along that process. And here's some evidence-based practices that can support the work you're doing. So I think this is really pivotal in the idea journey. Yeah, I totally agree. Over this next year, certainly building up all of our social media platforms to have as broad a reach as possible, facilitating uptake and scaling across.

43:18
you know, whatever, an industry, a field across Canada, of the tools and resources that we are developing and that others have developed as well that we're helping promote will be absolutely critical because we really ultimately want to have a substantive and measurable impact in the employment of persons with disabilities. So that is our end goal is to make, I guess, transformative change by having an impact in this field. So we want to...

43:45
make sure we're facilitating that happening by not just ending our efforts with development of those tools and resources, but the scaling part is really, really critical for us as well. Well, I knew this was going to be another fun, dynamic conversation, and you've told us so much about year one of the IED initiative. I mean, I have to ask before we wrap things up, you know, have we covered all the essentials about year one, or is there anything else you think is important for us to mention?

44:15
There's a lot we could go through. There's a long list. As I mentioned, I started PrepareList and there's quite a few things that are underway. I think the main thing I would like to say is just ask people to reach out to us, to partner with us, to collaborate with us, to connect with us in some way, become part of this broader initiative that we're all part of.

44:40
in order to make change, we need to work together. So I think it's really critical that we connect with each other, and I just encourage anybody who's listening to this podcast to become part of that wave of change. And to join, like us on our speaker series, to join the newsletter so that you can be aware of some of the exciting work that's happening and connect where relevant, for sure. Well.

45:08
You know, I just have to say thank you so much for coming back on the show to help us kick off our 2024 season. And truthfully, I want to know what everything else was on your list, Emil. So I'm looking forward to our next conversation about idea. You're going to have to, it sounds like, come back every year for the duration of this to keep us up to date on what's happening in this really important initiative. Oh, we'd be happy to.

45:38
Thank you very much for the invitation. And in the meantime, as well, thank you. And in the meantime, as Dean said, we have put some links into the show notes so that people can go to, that people can go to so they can learn more about all the different ways that they can engage and participate, or just learn about the inclusive design for employment access initiative. That's right, Jeanette. Check out those links.

46:07
Do make sure if you haven't, do catch that original conversation with Emile and Rebecca about idea if you haven't already. Once again, one more time, it's episode eight from 2023. You know, I'm like you, Jeanette, I'm already looking forward to next season's update from Emile and Rebecca because it's like I said earlier, their enthusiasm and passion is just infectious and it just well, it always makes for a great conversation. So Dr. Emile Thampa and Dr. Rebecca Goertz.

46:36
I would just again like to say thank you for once again helping us kick off a new season of You Can't Spell Inclusion Without a D with the update on what's happening with the reimagining of how we can make workplaces more disability inclusive. Thank you, we've been delighted to be part of this conversation. Well thanks from me as well, Emile and Rebecca. You know, next episode we're going from inclusion to ableism.

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Joining me as guest co-host will be Odin's own Dr. Jennifer Krausen. We'll be talking with two guests who have some insights about why ableism is still happening in the workplace in 2024. It's many forms and what can and needs to be done about it. That's coming later this month on April 23rd. And until then, that's a wrap for this 2024 season opener of You Can't Spell Inclusion Without a D. I'm Jeanette Campbell. And I'm Dane Askin.

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Thanks again for listening wherever, whenever, and on whatever podcast app you're listening from. Join us each episode as we have insightful conversations, much like this one, and explore disability inclusion in business and in our communities from all the angles. You Can't Spell Inclusion Without a D is produced in Toronto, Canada by the Ontario Disability Employment Network. All rights reserved. Our podcast production team, executive producer and host, Jeanette Campbell.

48:00
Producer Sudefo, Associate Producer and host Dean Askin, audio editing and production by Dean Askin. Our podcast theme is Last Summer by Ixen. If you have feedback or comments about an episode, contact us at info at odinnetwork.com. That's info at O-D- Join us each episode for insights from expert guests as we explore the power of inclusion.

48:27
the business benefits of inclusive hiring, and why disability is an important part of the diversity, equity, and inclusion conversation. Listen to You Can't Spell Inclusion Without a D on Podbean or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

>>>Francis Fung: Okay, I have a time check here, it's past noon so we're going to get started. um So welcome everyone to the IDEA speaker series. Our regular host Dan Samosh is off this week, so I'll be filling in for him. My name is Francis Fung I'm the Engagement Co-lead for IDEA and the National Manager for Rehabilitation and Clinical Services at March of Dimes Canada. This uh session is being recorded and the recordings will be made available on our IDEA website that's triple W https://vraie-idea.ca/

For those of you who may not know much about IDEA, it is a social Innovation laboratory focused on helping create stronger and more diverse labour markets that include persons with disabilities through knowledge to practice. IDEA is the acronym for Inclusive Design for Employment Access.
Before we dive into today's webinar, I'd like to share a land acknowledgement relevant to the IDEA National office which is located in Toronto. IDEA is uh National office is situated on the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca and most recently the Mississaugas of the Credit. Today�this land is still home to many Indigenous People across Turtle Island, and we are grateful to have the opportunity to conduct our work on it. Please note, that this acknowledgement is only relevant to Toronto, however since we are gathered for this meeting virtually uh, we suggest you think a little bit about the communities in your respective locations as well.

If you're new to this monthly speaker series um this series serves um as an opportunity to hear the latest about the current topics in the work disability policy arena and learn about their activities underway within and beyond IDEA, and we um we encourage you to stay uh connected with us through this webinar series. During the last 20 minutes of this webinar, we will hold a question-and-answer period, and you will be able to type your questions in a Q&A box at any time throughout the presentation and we'll answer as many questions as we can at the end of the webinar.

Our speaker for today is Dr Alexis Buettgen, a Postdoctoral Fellow, at DeGroote School of Business and an adjunct assistant clinical professor at the School of Rehabilitation Sciences at McMaster University. She's also an adjunct faculty member in the Critical Disability Studies program at York University. For IDEA Alexis co-leads the measurement and evaluation activity area and she's also an advisor and consultant to the International Disability Alliance. An International alliance that advocates at the univers.. uh sorry at the United Nations for more inclusive environments worldwide. Alexis's work focuses on advancing research practice and policy in the areas of social and climate justice, inclusion, and poverty reduction, as well as community capacity and coalition building with a particular interest in disability studies. So welcome Alexis and over to you.

>>>Alexis Buettgen Thank you, Francis, for that introduction, still hearing me, okay? All good. It's one of those days where there are lots of tech surprises so hopefully all goes well for the rest of this webinar and thank you to all of you who are here today. I can't see you so it's kind of strange as a presenter to be sitting in this sort of invisible room with people that I can't see, um but um happy to connect with you uh a bit throughout my presentation and then also at the end.

Um so this topic is a big one and um uh something I that I've been exploring over the last couple of years or so, uh in terms of um disability inclusion in the green economy you know broadly speaking, but today I'm going to focus in particular on the area on inclusive employment in the green economy. So sometimes uh acknowledgements and thank yous come at the end, but I want to start here and express my thanks from the outset, uh to some really important groups and people who were integral to making this research happen. So first, I want to thank IDEA uh for their uh support of this work and for this webinar in particular, uh as well as for my thanks for co-funding my post-doctoral research which is where this week's um presentation comes from, with IDEA and the Institute for Work and Health. I also want to thank Emile Tompa who was my post-doctoral supervisor extraordinaire, uh and really integral and making sure that this work happened. We had lots of conversations and thinking through this um uh newish area of research I would say. Thank you also very much to IWH staff so the Institute for Work & Health Emma, Maggie, and Joanna who were really helpful with some of the uh literature review pieces; the McMaster University Department of Economics where I was um during during the data collection for this, all interview participants who took their time and contributions um to speak with me and share their thoughts and ideas and experiences and Katherine Lofts who was a stellar research assistant throughout this work. So just want to say all that right from the beginning because I'm just really grateful for all of the support for this work. um

To get started I'll give a bit of background and context on the topic, um so this work stemmed from a recognition and many years of work I've been doing in academia but also been working with uh the disability movement uh internationally but also locally and nationally here in Canada, around issues of socioeconomic poverty and the profound and disproportionate rates of poverty and low employment rates among people with disabilities which some of you may be familiar with and one of the reasons why IDEA exists as well. So, this has been an issue that's been bothering me, and I've been thinking about um solutions for quite a while. So, it was in about 2020 when I started learning about climate change and its disproportionate impacts on people with disabilities um particularly in terms of how um folks are able to um manage in emergencies. So, in wildfires or in floods how can they get out? How are they supported? How are they included in um emergency preparedness plans and often not? um Some solutions to climate change is around um using public transit which when it is built is not always affordable or accessible to people. So, people with disabilities are left behind and left out of those um situations, but there's also this need to shift towards more sustainable economic development, with a growing recognition that climate change is real, and it is happening, and it is getting worse and so we need to do something about it. um So I started learning a little bit about the green economy, and what it means and the possibilities there and I'm really interested in that, but then found that there was very limited knowledge or awareness about disability inclusion in terms of climate change but also in terms of the emerging green economy and green jobs.

So on the screen here, um I just have those points written out in terms of background and context, and an image of people dressed up as polar bears uh from a um a protest, and they're holding signage that says "climate change makes poor people poorer" um often because the areas where um uh communities experiencing structural oppression and low income also tend to be disproportionately impacted by things like environmental pollution um and um the toxicity of of of that. So, there's a lot of um connections there. So, I'll get a little bit more into that, but before I go into it I wanted to just check in with all of you um to ask you um what does green economy mean to you? it's uh this concept that kind of gets thrown around a little bit sometimes the um the definition isn't clear it's a little bit elusive. So I just wanted to take a moment to invite you all to use the Q&A and just share you know, one word or a few words about what the green economy means to you and I'm going to try to see that at my end if I can if not, I'll just ask um Therese or Francis to see that because I don't see it right now.

>>>Francis Fung: Okay, so we have an entry, uh "sustainability."

>>> Alexis Buettgen: Oh yes, there it is I see that. Hi, Sandra, anybody else have any thoughts that come to mind what does the green economy mean to you? {Alexis Buettgen reads} "In tested domain", yes, I can see it now, {Alexis Buettgen reads} "shift in skills and jobs to those that support environmental sustainability." Yup, so great so thank you for that, uh {Alexis Buettgen reads} "means a workplace and environment that supports climate health." Yes, {Alexis Buettgen reads} "an economy focused on environmental preservation, sustainability and accountability." Great, thank you, uh I'm just going to.. great start.

There are no right or wrong answers to this, this isn't a trick question and it's not it's not a quiz, um but also wanted to um ask you likewise, what does "green jobs" mean to you? Please use the Q&A if you have any thoughts about what this term means to you. "Jobs with a low environmental footprint", "jobs that contribute to preserving the environment" is what I'm seeing in the in the Q&A area. Yes, "jobs that are good for the environment", yep, great so thank you all. uh "Jobs that cover a range of employment sectors" yes, "a job that is sustainable, healthy, and environmentally friendly reducing the environmental impact is what I'm seeing. Thank you all for contributing to that and thinking about it.

>>> Alexis Buettgen: um So uh as I started embarking on this research uh and went through a fairly steep learning curve; uh my my previous research was around uh as I mentioned, like disability and poverty issues, social inclusion, social exclusion, and social justice issues; so it's only been in the last few years I've started learning about this topic. uh So when I uh came across the green economy, I used the definition set out by the United Nations environmental program as sort of like an International broadly written definition, which understands the green economy to be something that is low carbon, resource efficient, and socially inclusive; and those three things together is what really interested me in this topic. Green jobs uh was also something that I've heard about um before, so I was curious about what those are, um, particularly with my interest in work and employment. um So for this research I was inspired by the International Labour Organization's definition of green jobs, which is defined as decent jobs that contribute to preserving or restoring the environment uh either in traditional sectors like manufacturing and construction or in new emerging green sectors such as renewable energy and energy efficiency. So, this definition is the one that I drew from because it refers to quality work with a fair income, job security and prospects for personal development, and social integration and equality of opportunity and treatment for all. So, to me, it sounds great, these are things that are going to help the environment and promote some sort of social inclusion and address some of the challenges that we're having in working employment now; but there was very little research that was done on this topic, so I explored it, using um these three broad research questions.

Uh the first uh reads, what are the challenges, barriers, and opportunities for inclusion of persons with disabilities in the green economy? That's really like the crux of this research, um but then I was also interested in really what is the current state of the scholarly literature on disability inclusion in the green economy. I wanted to take a deep dive into that to see what's actually known about this topic, and what programs, policies, and initiatives can support sustainable and equitable participation in the green economy. So those are my broader research questions, but this presentation will focus on findings specifically related to work and employment as part of this larger postdoctoral research project on disability inclusion across the green economy. So my methodology for this uh was an evidence synthesis approach uh which uh was was inspired by a critical disability theoretical framework, um and here I defined disability in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; as long-term physical, mental, intellectual, or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder an individual's full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others. I'm particularly um uh interested in the right to decent work and employment. So the the convention also talks about um the right to work and employment but this definition is one that I like to draw from because it focuses on people with disabilities as rights bearing citizens and understands disability from a cross perspective with people with different impairments and how their disability is impacted by the environment in which they're living in. um critical disability studies also draws from the disability justice model which focuses on examining disability and ableism as they relate to other forms of of oppression and identity such as like race, indigeneity, class, and gender; uh and that model in particular has a has a specific focus on sustainability so quite relevant to this work.

My methods involved a scoping review, um which included only those studies published between 2012 and 2023, uh published online and in English. We ended up with 21 at the end. uh We conducted qualitative interviews with 18 key informants, the majority of these participants included diverse people with disabilities who were familiar with the connections between disability and climate change, uh but participants also included green economy experts like researchers, policy analysts, policy makers, non-profit service providers and employers and entrepreneurs who are engaged in environmental sustainability efforts. uh Then I did an environmental scan um which uh is currently just in the process of analysis. All of this work is sort of in the later stages of a of an early analysis. um So this scan identified more than 30 promising policies, practices, and initiatives on a continuum really of more or less relevance to the green economy specifically; uh and most of these examples are from Western Europe a few from Canada and the USA. uh to scope out this work, I focused on the Global North um with a particular interest in Canada.

So, the findings I'm going to talk about in terms of the challenges and barriers and then also talk about opportunities. So, starting with challenges and barriers, uh one of the um biggest themes that came out of this work is that the current structure of work and employment as it is now is inherently problematic. um This is um as some of you might already be aware, there's you know, these disproportionately low employment rates of people with disabilities. There's a lack of accessibility. there's a lot of exclusion, explicit and implicit discrimination; and so, what I learned through this research is that all of those things will continue to be the same unless there's a transformational shift in the way we understand work and employment in relation to um environmental sustainability. So here are some of the particular areas that are problematic in relation to green jobs and um the green economy; is a lack of access for people with disabilities to education and relevant skills in the green job sector, um as well as like a over representation of people with disabilities in entry-level jobs and potentially hazardous green jobs especially in um some examples from the uh e-waste recycling sector where um people are dealing with new chemicals um new types of equipment on a regular basis. They're a lot of times run by um small businesses who might not have the capacity to provide health benefits and there's a lot of health and safety hazards and risks associated with that work. um, so that's one particular problem, as well as this prevalence of the charity model where people with disabilities are getting jobs because it's considered the nice thing to do uh as opposed to like true inclusion. uh Through this work, I found a few examples of disability inclusive employment uh in the green economy um but not many. uh So the point made through the interviews and through the research like the scoping review was that this is a largely untapped potential to harness the creativity and um really advance the socially inclusive green economy by including people with disabilities in green jobs. um The last point here is um around the uh risk of dependence on financial incentives for employment of people with disabilities. So um on the one hand, uh the research that uh has been published on disability inclusive employment and green jobs was that financial incentives were found to be a key facilitator of employment of people with disabilities um and examples from the literature of inclusive employment emphasize that employers relied on financial incentives to employ a substantial number of people with disabilities in green jobs, um but the literature and the interviews suggest that there's a need to reduce this dependency on wage subsidies and financial incentives to advance the emergence of a new image of true diversity in green enterprises. So, shifting away from this charity model to more um rights-based approach and true inclusion.

Other challenges and barriers, um A big one that kept coming up over and over again is this uh problem with dialogic and functional silos. So, on the screen I have an image of um four uh steel silos side by side each separate from one another. um So this this theme of silos kept coming up over and over again um, particularly between government departments and agencies. So, for example, ministries of disability and social affairs are separate from ministries of the environment, um some people critiqued the Accessible Canada Act for not really addressing sustainability specifically. uh There was also some discussion around the um conceptual and practical divisions between ESG initiatives, so this is Environmental Social and Governance initiatives whereby disability and accessibility and corporate sustainability reporting has been largely neglected, um and relegated to social sustainability considerations which are less attention than environmental and economic sustainability; but there's also silos and divisions between and within movements, so a big challenge here is around the uh exclusive and inaccessible climate justice and labour movements um who are working towards progress um in a just transition to a green economy. So, in particular, the labour movement um working towards leaving no one behind. when we shift away from our dependence on fossil fuels to alternatives; um but disability has not really been included in in much of that so there's um been some divisions there.

There's also a general lack of meaningful investment in disability inclusion um in relation to to green jobs and the green economy and this is really reflected in the dirth and lack of literature and research on disability inclusion in the green economy which currently is largely hypothetical and conceptual, and it doesn't really have a lot of empirical studies. So, there's that piece, but also um what I heard was that you know, it's no longer socially acceptable to discriminate against people with disabilities; so there's an increasing mention of people with disabilities in laws, policies, and programs in relation to climate change, um but rhetoric really isn't enough. So, I have a quote here uh from one of the participants saying, "rhetoric isn't enough to change the climate and it's not enough to sustain a business." So for example, for somebody like a uh person with a disability trying to start up a business in the green economy or um support green jobs in some way, that there is a lack of appropriate funding uh in that regard for disabled social entrepreneurs in particular, and a lack of disability inclusion and climate financing; so like the loss and damage fund, adaptation funds, and green climate and environmental funds. So, this lack of investment um means there's not enough knowledge and technical expertise for people with disabilities and their representative organizations to be informed and prepared for the growth in green jobs and the green economy. So, all that being said, the challenges and the barriers uh are heavy but there are also some interesting opportunities and I want to share this example here on the screen of sustainability includ...uh Sustainability Through an Inclusive Lens. or STIL Solutions.

This uh was a Canadian Social Enterprise founded by woman with a vision impairment to bridge the gap between sustainability and accessibility. So, on the screen I have Hillary Scandin who was the entrepreneur who um started up this business. uh So the company produced something called Waste Finder uh on the screen in the the um top right corner, I have the Waste Finder system which is uh tactile floor mats placed in front of waste disposal bins. So, if you've ever been in a a public space uh where you might see you know those there are three bins, two or three bins side by side, one is for garbage, one is for recycling, and one might be for compost. what Hillary found as a blind woman was that she wasn't able to divert her waste properly because she couldn't see which one needed where her waste needed to go, so she um started a business to create these tactile floor mats; and they were sold to municipal governments, universities, pharmacies, food markets, and nonprofit organizations across Canada the US and even in India. They also offered consultation and workshops for businesses, communities, and institutions to make their spaces more accessible and sustainable; uh but this business has unfortunately closed down um because of the challenges with the lack of investment. A lot of people were keen on the projects and started pilot projects but didn't actually fully invest in it. So, um this is an example of both the challenges, barriers, and the opportunities um around disability inclusion in the green economy. So, I'm always interested in in understanding the challenges and barriers but where are the opportunities and how do we go forward. um What are the solutions and how can we harness some of that to promote broader forms of inclusion. So, um now I'm going to talk about the opportunities that were identified um in this research.

So, the first was around employment opportunities in green jobs. So green jobs were mostly defined uh by participants as waged employment in the renewable energy uh environmental and conservation sectors, um and so as employment options arise to provide um good green goods and services, there are opportunities to advance equitable employment especially as our economic and environmental transitions can negatively impact low-income communities. So, um some of the things that I heard was that it uh there's opportunities to leverage all of the money going into disability and employment and green solutions and if we can bring those things together there could be tremendous opportunity to advance disability inclusion in the green economy. um Also there was some thought that perhaps employers who are um trying to advance green jobs are receptive of changes in the world of work, so perhaps more receptive to employing people with disabilities, um and the literature suggests that firms employing a substantial number of workers with disabilities and integrating diverse worker knowledge into their business model reinforce the social, economic, and environmental sustainability of the organizations. So, some of these business models that could work well for disability employment are those that focus on a triple bottom line in terms of the people, the planet, and profit. So, there is some opportunity there, but um the evidence suggests that this is um not really happening right now. So I have a quote on the screen now from a participant I'll call Joe, uh who said that, "respecting the environment, society, community, people and also thinking about social impact and not just generating revenues. For me a green job is receptive of changes of individual needs and adjusting for reasonable accommodation flexibility and adaptability." So, there's the opportunity, however, another participant I'll call Sydney said, "we cannot just assume that every green job is a decent job, and it's important to ensure that green jobs also meet those decent job requirements." So thinking back to the challenge that I mentioned just before, around um some of the health and safety risks and entry-level positions in some sectors of the so-called green economy um are important things to think about; and that we don't replicate the current challenges in work and employment going forward um towards transforming our economy to be more sustainable.

So, with that in mind, I want to share another example um of a organization called ATF Gaia. uh This is a firm based in France that specializes in the life cycle management of professional IT and mobile equipment from deployment to reuse through operational um maintenance. So, since its Creation in 2005, uh ATF Gaia has promoted the employability, professionalization, and social inclusion of people with disabilities. They have 81 employees uh 68% of them are people with disabilities on permanent contracts. The company reconciles economic performance with their social mission and continuously works to advance the integration of employees with disabilities; adapt their workstations, when necessary, support the professionalization of their employee's development of skills in the environmentally sustainable jobs sector, and focus on the extension of the lifespan of IT equipment, waste reduction, and the protection of natural resources. So, I came across this example as um in the literature as an exemplar of social, environmental, and economic sustainability um with um record... um recorded annual business sales nearing almost 10 million Euros. So, seems to be um somewhat of a successful business model.

Other opportunities related to this is around human rights law and policy. uh So um this was thought about as a way to leverage current anti-discrimination and affirmative action requirements to increase the employment of people with disabilities, um as well as lean on international human rights law that obliges states to ensure inclusion and meet climate targets. So, examples here were the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the Paris Agreement and the sustainable development goals. um in terms of policy and thinking about the connection between disability and climate; uh participants talked about the built environment regulations is something like hanging fruit that could be a starting place, uh leveraging uh LEAD certifications, so that's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design with accessibility standards for the built environment. So, things like automatic doors that also conserve energy, living walls that offer tactile information and cleaner air, as well as automatic taps and lighting all of which are beneficial for the environment and for people with disabilities, and kind of everyone, I would argue. There's also increasing recognition of disability in climate policies and agreements, um so it's good news that people with disabilities are at least considered and specifically mentioned; um like in Canada their 2021 Nationally determined contribution under the Paris Agreement, as well as Canada's Sustainable Jobs Plan. uh So this sustainable jobs plan includes targeted support for Canadian workers and communities and specifically mentions people with disabilities in the investment and skills programming for sustainable jobs. So, they cite um almost $300 million over the next five years is promised for the Opportunities Fund for people with disabilities which assists people with disabilities to prepare, obtain, and uh maintain employment. um so that is great, um but the Opportunities Fund is not new and it's not specific or targeted to green jobs or green economic development in particular.

So, on the screen, I have just some examples of what I mentioned, uh image and the front cover of the Accessible Canada's Act, an image on the CRPD, an image of the Climate Agreement, front page of the Sustainable Jobs Plan and the Government of Canada's Adaptation Action Plan which also at least mentions people with disabilities as well. So, these are potentially opportunities to leverage. The last opportunity I want to highlight is um this cultural shift that's happening as we start to recognize the impacts of climate change and its realness, um and so the shift towards thinking about wellness and collective care. So the green economy presents a cultural shift really uh to transform our current economic and business models to support a thriving ecosystem, and my research indicates that collective care and support for living in a world that is hostile to us is work that's already underway by people with disabilities, Indigenous people, and other historically marginalized groups; so there's an opportunity to learn from those experiences and value that knowledge. There are also a lot of possibilities within the care economy. So, the care economy recognizes paid and unpaid care work um and calls for greater investment in public health infrastructure and expanding the inherently low carbon sectors of caregiving, teaching, social work, and the arts which is often not considered uh part of the green jobs but is really essential to our social, environmental, and economic sustainability. So, when thinking about well-being, I just want to share this other example here of an organization in the UK called Wheels for Well-being. uh They address the challenges and barriers to accessible and environmentally sustainable forms of transportation such as cycling. um So they uh are run by a group of trustees, staff, and volunteers with disabilities to create ad adapted forms of of cycling um and particularly for those who don't have access to uh alternate forms of accessible and affordable transportation options. So, on the screen, I just have a couple of pictures of these adapted bicycles uh and the folks who are involved in that initiative.

So, to conclude, uh I have some preliminary conclusions because this research has been a lot to think about and I'm really open to hearing from you around um what... how to interpret this, what matters most to you, what sort of stood out for you, what should be thought about. um This is just the beginning of a longer research program for me; um but basically uh what I've concluded is that there is an opportunity right now to make the green economy and green jobs inclusive. As it's emerging it can be reconceptualized and represented um uh to to support an inclusive image of disability. Also, that disabled experiences and epistemologies must be central to the design, planning, and implementation of the emerging green economy using inclusive design principles so very relevant to the IDEA initiative and including people with disabilities throughout the whole process. Also, there is a need to implement a just transition. So, this is about making the transition to a green economy socially just, uh and that will require an integrated mix of employment standards, social protection, skills development, and attitudinal transformation with regards to disability.

Some preliminary recommendations, I've split them up and thinking about research, uh policy, and practice. So, for researchers there's a real strong need for theoretically informed empirical research within a transformative paradigm focusing on um social justice and I would suggest a critical disability lens fits very well with this work; uh and looking for examples where there more examples of inclusive green economic activities in real-world settings. So, like ESG or sustainable business models as well as a critical policy analysis of some of the just transition and sustainable jobs plans that are coming out now. In terms of policy, um lots of the research indicated that Government needs to take a lead here, and there is an opportunity for the Government of Canada in particular to demonstrate international leadership in this area. There needs to be multi-stakeholder governance with a focus on decent work as well as collaborative cross-sector local workforce development so bringing together the public, private, and non-profit sectors as well as um community groups in order to to inform that process. There must also be mandates and regulations or requirements for disability inclusion in climate financing and procurement to enforce this to happen, um as well as leveraging the existing incentives that I mentioned uh before. Employers uh themselves can showcase their promising practices and initiatives in this regard, some employers might be doing it and not even really thinking about it as uh as as as a big deal but trying to connect the economic, environmental, and social sustainability together, employing people with disabilities in some sort of green jobs is really um critical. So, and thinking about this skepticism abounds in this area, so most participants were really skeptical of the role of the private sector in a disability-inclusive green economy given the current emphasis on maximizing profit. So, one of the participants said {Alexis Buettgen reads} uh that "simply capital cannot do this job because of the way the capitalist system is designed to operate, um and that these systems cannot be reformed in a way that would be inclusive of collective care", and that theme was carried out throughout the literature as well. um Another participant said {Alexis Buettgen reads} "I don't have any hope of the private sector doing anything that's not in its own interest unless there are reasons it becomes its interest" so those quotes are up there on the screen.

So I have questions remaining and for discussion that if you want to take up that would be wonderful, but things that I'm thinking about now and engaging with uh participants who took place in the study and other groups I'm working with; is wondering you know is it possible to realize a disability inclusive green economy and green jobs in a capitalist political economy, and if so, what would that look like? Also, what role can we play? So those of us who are interested in the intersection of disability and employment uh and contributing towards inclusive employment in a green economy how have you considered the intersection between disability inclusion and environmental sustainability in your work, uh and what opportunities can you leverage to advance knowledge and practice at this intersection? So, I'll leave those with you to ponder uh today or later on I'd be happy to connect um at some point over email or on LinkedIn. I have my references and resources listed here and my contact information. So, thank you very much for listening, I know it it's been a lot uh it's a big topic but a really interesting one I think, so thank you.

>>>Francis Fung: Well thank you Alexis for a very uh interesting and informative session and I know that you've left some questions for us to ponder um and also methods to stay connected with you and carry on the conversation that we are uh uh really appreciative of that; um but we have a little bit of time right now um if you would mind may be taking some questions. So um for the audience if you're new to the Zoom platform um there is a Q&A button that should be on the bottom of your screen and if you click on that you should be able to type in your question, um and I will try to bring that to Alexis and uh and have that answer with the remaining time that we have for this session. So um you can go ahead and do that, and um while we're waiting for the questions to come in, Alexis um you've mentioned quite a few things um with connecting the you know the the the support to people with disabilities and the inclusion uh with uh green economy which is emerging in our society, um and you talked a little bit about having that social conscience um altogether, and uh you know there are certainly some challenges uh from a employer side in a capitalist economy. I I'm wondering from the political front how do you see this, because environmental issues and social services issues are often treated very very separately you know in terms of funding and departments within the government. um Has there been any efforts you know related to that that you've seen um even at the grassroots level or is this very very new still?

>>> Alexis Buettgen: Yeah, I've been looking uh and I I um can say you know that the so the Sustainable Jobs Plan for example uh is something that was informed um part by Chrystia Freeland and thinking about disability in particular and how um the Government of Canada wants to move forward with a just transition to a green economy. um So I was able to see her working in collaboration with uh Steven Guilbeault the um minister for the environment, and so that has been something that's been good to see in like building those connections, but that's also a result of years of advocacy. so, um there's a group that I've been working with at McGill University called the Disability Inclusive Climate Action Research Program and that's a uh an international network of people interested at that uh in disability and climate issues. uh and I've been lobbing for a long time to get recognition of the impacts of climate change on people with disabilities as well as how people with disabilities can be engaged as agents of change and moving things forward; so, um there are those elements and I found, individuals here and there that that are starting to make the the connections as well. um There was a one example also that I came across locally at the University of Waterloo, um they did some work to um put together a guide on um... related to the circular economy and their built environment at the university to make it both sustainable and accessible at the same time. So, there has been a few examples that are starting to arise but there's not that many um mostly because where we're at right now I think is just in in building education and awareness around the connections between disability and climate and social justice so it's kind of where we are right now.

>>>Francis Fung: Great, um I know that uh among our audience we probably have quite a few people that are working with employers or um try to facilitate a more inclusive workplace; um and when we had the opportunity to speak with um perhaps maybe the leaderships um you know within those employer settings, what can we tell them about green economy and how how do we connect that conversation with with um inclusion of people with disabilities, because you know when we work with these employers they're not necessarily familiar with green economy depending on their operation and what their business uh nature is like. Can you comment on that?

>>> Alexis Buettgen: Yeah, so anecdotally uh and just just learning um from the findings from this research. um One I think important point to make is that um at some point employers uh are going to have to be more sustainable and they're going to have to be more accessible and that those two things don't need to be done separately they can be done together. uh Which ultimately can save time and resources and be much more effective overall. um So my thoughts would be to start thinking about how those two initiatives might connect, um and when they're talking about or thinking about sustainability are they talking about that in terms of environmental sustainability or economic sustainability or social sustainability, and what are the connections between um those three elements of their work? So um I think it's just it's a conversation at this point, but this is definitely an area where there needs to be more research, is an understanding of um any examples that are out there of people who are are trying to do this, to try to make the connections; um but the challenges that I've been hearing about um in the literature and from people trying to advance this work are that you know the sustainability departments are separate from the accessibility departments and they don't really talk to each other. So starting to have those conversations and finding where their mutual interests are is a good place to start.

>>>Francis Fung: Thank you, um I want to bring to you a comment and a questions from our audience as well um one of our audience um uh works with the Disability Inclusion Business Council Secretariat um and the council members are are are big businesses and um they continue to emphasize that disability inclusion is good for business and good for employers, um and when their workplaces are inclusive it results in a better business outcomes and in the context of your earlier comment that you know perhaps employees are reluctant to do anything uh that isn't you know within their their self-interest, um the audience is wondering um if there's an opportunity to show employers that disability inclusion in the transition to a green um economy is, in fact, their best interest.

>>> Alexis Buettgen: It's a tough business case um to make, I think you know we all been trying it for many years um and so um the the folks who were uh quite skeptical about this are are are people that weren't necessarily also um doing this work um from the private sector's perspective, um so there I just want to caveat my comments around that point, um so yeah and making the business case around it. I think it's it it resonates well with the argument that you know if we design things to be inclusive from the outset it actually costs less money in the long run, because then you don't have to go back and retrofit, you don't have to worry about um providing you know accommodations or adaptations to something that's already built or developed, whether it's uh a structural physical entity or whether it's a policy or a program. So, designing inclusively from the outset I'll actually make it more effective, um and the same goes for anything around sustainability or climate action. So, you know thinking about how um when you know if there's if there's this push in a municipality let's say to um create a better public transit system so that they can um reduce the number of cars on the road. If those public transit systems are not uh built to be accessible and affordable then there's a huge wack of the population that aren't going to be able to use it and it won't fully address the issue that they're hoping to address. So, the same would happen at an organization or firm level um where whatever they're trying to develop and build I they think they can really harness from the knowledge of people with disabilities themselves. So, one of the points that I made earlier was that you know people with disabilities are um well versed and have had a lot of experience working, living, and managing in a world that has been hostile to their existence, and we are now living in a world that is becoming increasingly hostile to our existences. You know there's there's wildfires, there's heat waves, there's flooding, there's droughts that's making it harder and harder; and so, learning from that experience and how to manage it and think creatively because if we need to think outside the box, we need to talk to people who live outside that box, that would be part of my answer.

>>>Francis Fung: Right, thank you, um you've earlier on mentioned about the the green economy maybe a bit more new um it's an emerging economy. uh An example was brought up um that in the '90s uh technology advancement um allowed the telecommunication sector to grow quite a bit um and at that time um call centers type of occupations became sort of a preferred um environment for people with disabilities to uh to get jobs, um and um however, in many instances some of those jobs became um precarious in nature and there was lack of career advancement for people with disabilities. So, uh you know sometimes it's due to the inaccessibility of the system um uh in that in that sector, so what can we learn from that example um with the transformation um of that technology and those jobs available for people with disabilities, and how do we avoid the same type of pitfalls?

>>> Alexis Buettgen: I think using a decent work agenda right from the outset is really critical. um We need to address poverty and uh climate change together uh in the in the same vein. um So you know, if for example there are government grants available to promote green job development then that green job development must be decent, it must provide quality work, it has to um you know... there's various indicators around how to measure that and I don't need to go into it right now, but there the International Labour Organization has a decent work agenda for example; but that's about um avoiding precarious work, providing people with a fair income, uh opportunities for professional and personal growth, and and real inclusion in the workplace. So, my sense uh from this research is that Government needs to be a leader in that way uh in terms of how they're moving this forward. So that's been a key message from what I've learned around climate change, in order to make an impact Governments need to be strong leaders, and also in terms of green jobs and the green economy they also need to be strong leaders to promote um environmental sustainability and social inclusion at the same time. So there's this need to really think about how the green economy is defined um and that was why in my recommendations for research doing some critical policy analysis and looking at how disability is starting to be mentioned, and how some of these initiatives are really going to impact people with disabilities and how they can be better included in the design and the implementation right now before we get too far along in the transition.

>>>Francis Fung: Okay, we have a couple more um entries on a Q&A, um One of them is um more of a comment um but I'm going to uh try to paraphrase a little bit for you, um so we have someone that had experience with research in economics and retention, um and there are some um employment insertion models that have been discussed, um and one of the things that were noticed is that uh there's a dependency on funding, um and and that often force leaders to uh focus on sort of the performance of employees and uh during those reintegration programs. So, the uh questions uh that raised is regarding um how sustainable is this with this kind of a structure um against the social mission and and the challenges for the working collective.

>>> Alexis Buettgen: I'm not quite sure I fully understand the question.

>>>Francis Fung: That's um so it's not so much of a of a question but more of a comment on that and wondering you can elaborate on it. So, the um the comment is that uh certain elements such as dependency on funding has become a major constraint that forces leaders to strengthen the performance of the employees um and participants in reintegration programs, so um this sometimes would raise questions about the sustainability of the structure um for the social mission and also present significant challenges for the working collectives. So, wondering if you have any comments to elaborate on that.

>>> Alexis Buettgen: So, in terms of reintegration and sustainability. I mean um I so I I'm not super familiar with the reintegration process itself, um but when I think about disability inclusion and sustainability um you know it's it's it's thinking about you know how like I think about it is also not forgetting that people with disabilities are are people. So, um what you were just talking about there sounds very much like a kind of surveillance type of model, which I would say you know, really, I don't know... if that's um that's not really what the green economy based on a definition of being socially inclusive is not really so much um what that's about... So, you know in support but in supporting people reintegrating means you know supporting people back to work, if they've been injured or so on, um you know engaging people in like engaging workers and employees with disabilities in conversations and initiatives at an organization or firm level about how they can be more sustainable gets more buy in from uh employees. You know, and you really gather a lot of diverse worker knowledge in order to uh create better happier workers and workplaces as well as move towards something um that's going to be sustainable and work for the organization itself. So, I'm not sure if that's kind of getting at that at all but that's um my comment.

>>>Francis Fung: Yeah, um we have another question that perhaps is somewhat related to this as well. I think the question is that um you know when we supporting people with disabilities and when there is a structure that has a focus on uh performance in the capitalist um economy um and how would that impact on that social mission? um there's a follow up to another question that's maybe related to this, is that you touch on the health and safety in some of these green economy uh jobs. um So the question is that what would you advise in terms of um how you could limit health and safety risk for people with disabilities in particular in those uh environments.

>>> Alexis Buettgen: Oh that's a big question, there's I think there there's so many layers to this work and it's it's it spans the bounds of policy and practice and programs like it's really it there's there's so many silos to be broken down in order to make that happen, um but I think one one of the critical points is that just because a person with disabilities has been employed in a job does not mean that that's a good job, it doesn't mean that it's quality work and so um looking at that and thinking about how to address that challenge is really important, but you know the thing the example with the E-Waste um recycling um in the health and safety risk so the the ATF example I shared with you that wasn't necessarily the case, but in some other organizations it is, and part of that is just because the the the exponential growth in tech it's really hard to keep up with the changes in in the equipment and in the materials that are used, um and then the challenges associated with being a small business, so there's this is why there's a need to do to promote more cross- sector uh and uh more cross- sector collaboration and multi-stakeholder governance around those things. So it's very layered and very complex.

>>>Francis Fung: Yeah, thank you, Alexis, I I think you've given um um the audience a lot to think about. There's a lot of um interconnected things that you touched on.

>>>Francis Fung: um So we are um close to the last few minutes um of our time together now um so I want to uh thank you on behalf of IDEA for um taking the time to provide this uh presentation. I wanted to give a reminder to the audience that the session was recorded um so it will be made available on our IDEA website, um and we will also be back for our next IDEA speaker series on Friday, June 28th so just about a month away, and the next speaker will be Valerie Martin from the University of Quebec in Montreal. um In the meantime and uh if anyone has any questions uh they can feel free to reach us at info@vraie-idea.ca or https://www.vraie-idea.ca/ um and we invite you to follow us on our social media accounts as well. So, thank you again uh Alexis for the wonderful session and uh we'll end here today thank you.