Preparing

• It’s crucial to have support from senior leaders in your municipality to help with budget decisions. However, you also need community members and people who use municipal services to believe in and support your efforts.
• Universal design is not just about making buildings and outdoor spaces accessible. It’s also about how people interact with these spaces. Staff need to be educated on how to work effectively in these environments.
• Consult with existing municipal accessibility plan, if there is one. Provinces with accessibility legislation require it.
• Look at the policies in your municipality and compare them with those in similar communities, whether they are urban or rural.
• Read academic articles, such as free research papers on Google Scholar. You can also look at information from disability-focused groups, such as the Rick Hansen Foundation, to find the best and newest practices being used today.
• Think about what has worked well in your municipality’s past accessibility projects. Building relationships with other departments can help you understand how they plan and implement accessibility initiatives.

Engaging with the Community

• Outreach
  • Get a variety of people involved right from the start. This includes people with different kinds of disabilities (like physical, sensory, or invisible disabilities), as well as their caregivers, family, and friends. Consider offering childcare so more people can participate.
  • Create materials that are easy to understand and use plain language. Provide clear instructions and offer different ways for people to give their input, both online and in person.
  • Instead of asking people to come to you, consider going to where they are or working with organizations that support them.
  • Try various methods to reach people, such as signs in parks with QR codes, site visits where people can explore the space, workshops, public meetings, and online platforms.
• Getting People Involved
  • Create a plan to talk to everyone in the community, especially people with disabilities. Make clear goals and explain how you’ll use people’s ideas. Keep talking to people even after the project is done to make things better.
  • Be open and honest. Show people how you made decisions and used their ideas. Share updates through newsletters or social media.
  • Get help from experts. Hire people who are good at talking to different groups, including those with disabilities. These helpers should know about making things accessible.
  • Budget enough funds to talk to everyone properly.
  • If you ask people with disabilities for special help, pay them for their time. Ask them what kind of reward they prefer, such as money, a gift card, or a letter of recommendation. Compensation should be fair.
  • If you invite people with disabilities to meetings, give them food and help with travel. Make sure there are no costs to them for helping you.
  • Don’t rush. Give everyone time to understand and share their thoughts.
  • If you can, create an accessibility advisory committee to make sure everyone’s needs are met (see below).
• Making the Process Inclusive
  • Use different ways to talk. Have people who can use sign language to help those who are deaf. Describe pictures for people who can’t see them.
  • Pick places that are easy for everyone to use and offer the following features:
    • Good entrances
    • Good lighting
    • Alarms people can see
    • Sound systems
    • Washrooms everyone can use
    • Signs that are easy to read
  • Set up the room so everyone can see and move around easily.
  • Think about these aspects:
    • How people can get there by bus or car
    • Places to park for people with disabilities
    • The best time of day for the meeting
  • Explain to people how to get into the building. Tell them where the washrooms are and where to park.
  • Help people who need extra support by offering them special tools to see or hear better. Hire people who can use sign language. Use technology, for example, a device that shows words on a screen as people talk. Provide information in different forms, like braille or large print. Allow service animals and caregivers to come.
  • Pay attention to what people say. Be patient and try to understand how others feel.

Investing in an Accessibility Advisory Committee

If your municipality already has a committee, go to their meetings and talk about recreational activities. Describe problems people face when they try to join in sports or games. Send someone from your team to the meetings or write a short report about making activities easier for everyone. Share ideas in other ways that work for you.

If you don’t have such a committee yet, you can use the ideas below to start one in your recreation department or for your whole municipality.

• Role of the Accessibility Advisory Committee
  • The Accessibility Advisory Committee should be independent, not just an extension of the municipality. Think about setting up a joint team with other municipalities or departments.
  • Create a mission statement and values for the accessibility advisory committee that the members can change.
• Recruitment Considerations
  • Make sure your application process is easy for everyone to use.
  • Share job or volunteer opportunities in different formats, like large print or audio.
  • Reach out to various organizations to tell them about the opportunities. Explain how working with the committee can make a difference.
  • Choose a staff member to be accessibility coordinator.
  • Include a mix of people on your team, such as staff, volunteers, people with disabilities, and advocates who understand disability issues. Pay people with disabilities fairly for their time and expertise. This can be money or other rewards, such as free passes to programs. Ask them what works best for them. It’s important to compensate people with disabilities fairly.
• Committee Practices
  • Make sure everyone knows what “visitability,” “accessibility,” “inclusion,” and “universal design” mean.
  • Create a mission statement that explains why we’re working on accessibility and what we hope to achieve.
  • Host public meetings that can also be streamed online
  • Give committee members a special introduction to important laws and rules.

General Practices

• Focus on the process and importance of making buildings and outdoor spaces accessible before bringing up costs.
• Explain that universal design in new buildings doesn’t cost much more. But if accessibility is not included from the start, issues may need to be fixed later, and that can be very expensive.

Accessibility Audit

• Find experts who know how to do accessibility audits. You can use your accessibility committee or ask an outside group for help.
• Talk to people with disabilities in person, send them surveys, or invite them to help with site visits. This can include walking or rolling through spaces to see what needs improvement.
• Focus on the most-used buildings and outdoor spaces.
• If your municipality does not have its own accessibility standards, look at what others are doing.
• Think about what you have already done to improve accessibility and what challenges you faced.

Accessibility Audit Report/Plan

• Content
  • Include pictures and references to the building regulations.
  • Add details about the buildings and outdoor spaces you are talking about.
  • Create a report that’s easy to navigate and includes links to more information.
  • Make sure it follows your municipal rules for making everything accessible to everyone.
  • Decide which barriers to remove first, like focusing on the buildings and outdoor spaces people use the most or making changes that don’t cost much.
  • In the part of the plan about putting things into action, include ways to measure how well things are going. This helps senior managers see if progress is being made.
  • In the action part of the plan, say who is responsible for each task, such as removing barriers. Include how much each part will cost, when it will happen, and how you will check if it’s working. Explain how you’ll answer questions and handle complaints. Work with the people who will be doing the work to develop this part of the plan.
  • Share a draft of your report with everyone who helped make it and get their final approval.
  • Ask the community, especially people with disabilities, for feedback. You can do this by posting the draft online or having a meeting.
  • Use simple language and make the report look nice and easy to understand.

• Rick Hansen Foundation
• Accessibility Partners Canada
• SPARC BC

• “Accessible Public Spaces for All—A Practitioner’s Toolkit” by Future Cities Canada
• “The Accessibility Planning Toolkit for Municipalities” by Nova Scotia Accessibility Directorate

Communication

• Give the report to important people like the municipal manager and top leaders. Share it with the whole community through different ways, such as posting it on the municipal website or including it in newsletters.
• If possible, make the report available in different formats, such as large print, for people who need bigger text and audio versions for those who prefer listening.
• Create ways for people to give feedback. Use tools like suggestion boxes where people can write down their ideas or questionnaires or surveys to gather opinions.

Monitoring Progress

• Host regular meetings with leaders of the accessibility advisory committee and the accessibility coordinator (if there is one) while carrying out each project.
• Revise and update the plan annually.