Minutes for Meeting #11 of the
Accessible Information and Communications Standards Development Committee (IC-SDC)

Thursday February 26th and Friday February 27th, 2009
89 Chestnut Street, Second Floor
Toronto, Ontario M5G 1R1

Day 1: 9:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Day 2: 9:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Present 

• Mary Kardos Burton, IC-SDC Chair
• Kelly MacKenzie, Canadian Hearing Society
• Karen Taylor, Canadian National Institute for the Blind
• Rozalyn Werner-Arcé, Community Living Ontario
• Tara Jeji, Association for Persons with Physical Disabilities of Windsor and Essex County
• Diane Wagner, Learning Disabilities of Ontario
• Sue Morgan, Independent Living Centre of Waterloo Region
• Geoff Eden, (Individual) (Consumer)
• Francine Drouin, Regroupement des Parents et Amis des Enfants Sourds et Malentendants Franco-Ontarien (RESO)
• Dan Shire, IBM Canada
• Robert Pearson, Sun Life Financial
• Doug Jure,  Bloor-Yorkville BIA
• Michelle Saunders, Ontario Restaurant, Hotel and Motel Association
• Anna Sheehan, TD Bank Financial Group
• Bill Munson, Information Technology Association of Canada for Ontario
• George Elliott, The Anglican Diocese of Toronto & Provincial Synod of Ontario
• Lari Langford, Ontario Library Association
• Sherrill McCall, Cambrian College of Applied Arts & Technology
• Don Halpert, Ontario Hospital Association
• Beth Cooper, Ontario Public School Boards Association
• Jeanette Parsons, Council of Ontario Universities
• Mary Reid, City of Ottawa/ Association of Municipalities of Ontario
• Elizabeth Daly, Association of Municipal Managers, Clerks and Treasurers of Ontario (AMTCO)
• Francine Antonio on behalf of Patricia MacDonell City of Toronto
• Marla Krakower, Ministry of Government Services
• Nicole Hamacher, Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care
• Israel Lyon, Ministry of Economic Development and Trade/Ministry of Small Business and Entrepreneurship
• Eydie Troper, Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities
• Marcia Cummings, Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians (AEBC)
• Kurt Lynn, Canadian Hard of Hearing Association
• Fran Odette, Springtide Resources
• Nicole Rioux, Table provinciale francophone pour la personne handicapée
• Susan Brunet,  Individual
• Darren Cooper  
• Sharlyn Ayotte, T-Base Communications Inc
• Lynn Shaw, University of Western

Absent

• Giuseppina (Pina) D'Intino, Bank of Nova Scotia/ Scotia Bank
• Neita (Dr.) Israelite, York University
• Barbara Collier, Augmentative Communications Partnerships Canada
• Teresa Colangelo, Ontario Federation of Labour

Guests

• Jason Ducharme, Oliver Wyman
• Jutta Treviranus, University of Toronto – ATRC
  Support Unit
• Leslie Warren, ADO
• Nelly Tion, ADO
• Sheila Mawji, ADO
• Ben Somers, ADO
• David Dilks, Lura Consulting
• Patricia Halajski, Lura Consulting
• Marsha Cheddi, Canadian Standards Association
• Kevin Boehmer, Canadian Standards Association

SUMMARY OF MEETING 11 ACTION ITEMS

ACTION 1:  CSA to post the draft Employment Standard to the document repository.

ACTION 2:  Support Unit to develop a more comprehensive public review comments document and an updated draft standard.

ACTION 3: Support Unit to provide committee with a status update on Elections Ontario’s activities related to accessible elections.

ACTION 4:   Chair to request extension from Minister for the vote meeting.

M11.1 Chair’s opening remarks and meeting objectives

• Mary Kardos Burton, IC-SDC Chair opened Meeting 11. In her opening remarks, the Chair noted:
  • the objective of IC-SDC Meeting 11 is to review and discuss the feedback from public review;  a large quantity of feedback was received; almost three times the volume of feedback received for the Accessible Transportation standard and four times the volume of received on the Accessible Customer Service standard;  and
  • there were many suggestions for changes to the standard and the committee needs to create a revised standard for the Minister that is perhaps more outcome-oriented. The costs, timelines and the “do ability” of the standard are the three things the committee needs to work on.

M11.2 Approval of the Agenda and Minutes to the last meeting

• Action items from Meeting 10 were reviewed, all action items were complete and the minutes from Meeting 10 were approved.
• The draft Meeting 11 agenda was approved.

M11.3 Oliver Wyman presentation on public review issues

• J. Ducharme of Oliver Wyman OW, the firm responsible for receiving, compiling and analyzing comments from public review provided a summary of the public review feedback received on the draft standard. Refer to the OW presentation attached as ANNEX A.
  
• In order to focus the committee’s attention on critical insights, OW prepared a “Key Organizations” Report, whereby key organizations were identified as those associations that represent a very large number of individual organizations, stakeholders, sectors or regions within the Province.  OW found that the perspectives of key organizations were indicative of the feedback received from individual organizations (e.g., AMO’s views were confirmed by most of the 100+ individual municipalities that submitted comments).
  
• OW acknowledged that the "key organization" approach risks missing the odd great idea from some respondents, but stated that this risk is outweighed by the benefits to the SDC of having an unbiased and digestible analysis of insightful feedback from organizations that is both instructive and highly representative of Ontario stakeholders.
  
• IC-SDC committee member Mary Reid commented that the IC-SDC needs to question their level of comfort with the OW report and the (limited) level of analysis provided.  A tremendous amount of comments may not be considered as a result of the “key organization” approach.  Methodology of key organizations does not make sense and the Accessibility Directorate of Ontario needs to reconsider this methodology for future public reviews.

M11.4 Committee discussion on public review feedback

• Committee members made the following points related to the public review feedback:
  
  • S. Brunet recommended that the committee review a United Nations Human Rights report that was issued in January 2009 as it provides a big picture view of addressing accessibility.
  • B. Cooper reiterated concern about the section on accessible elections and placing requirements on individuals specifically in the case of municipal candidates.
  • J. Parsons noted organizations need to prepare and plan ahead for requests they might be required to meet and recommended that organizations should be required to create a plan that shows how they will deal with a request when it comes in.

- Some committee members felt:

• physical access to obtaining information and communication is important,
• the committee should align the IT requirements with ISO standards, and the U.S., our largest trading partner as this will make Ontario more competitive,
• the committee did not write enough about life-cycle renewal (e.g., when the time arrives for IT systems to be changed / upgraded, then they become accessible,
• the cost analysis could be a barrier to the standard as the cost analysis does not look at the high cost of excluding people with disabilities (e.g., spending vs. investing). Persons with disabilities pay taxes and would like an equal distribution of resources.

• The Chair added that the committee should:

• look internationally as we do our work on this standard,
• consider the practicalities about interpreters,
• ensure clear expectations and outcomes.

M11.5 Perspectives from the Ministry of Government Services (MGS)

• R. Dowler, Corporate Chief Strategist and Assistant Deputy Minister of the MGS offered his observations from the perspective of a policy person with an IT background:
  
  • IT and web-based methods are among the preferred channels of doing business for the government as it provides customers with 24 hour access and the ability to perform transactions without physically being required to come into an office.
  • the proposed standard needs to be practical, implementable, and affordable with sufficient lead time for businesses,
  • the upon request requirement is unclear, and
  • vendors in the US are now following US 508 and international standards.

M11.6 Resolution of key public review issues

• In general committee members were supportive of the following types of revisions to the draft IC standard:

Overall

• simplifying and improving the clarity of the document,
• ensuring the standard is feasible and practical,
• a hybrid (management, performance, prescription) type of standard,
• refraining from using the term critical services, but describe the circumstances under which accessible formats will be mandatory.

Section 1

• simplifying the categories of information while preserving the concept of “bi-lateral” communication,
• editing the scope based on revised content of the standard.

Section 2

• removing the “General Accessibility Requirements” clause (2.1) and discussing the relationship between OHRC and the standard elsewhere – noting that application of standard will help organizations better prepare for requests for alternate formats,
• clarifying and consolidating the management system requirements (Clause 2.2 to 2.7) into a more clear and concise clause.

Sections 3 and 4

• replacing business enterprise and IT-based communication systems with a clause for accessible web content and websites.  Organizations should show incremental results and full accessibility of public websites within 5 years,
• referring internal IT systems to the EA-SDC as a person with a disability should not be denied employment because of inaccessible systems,
• not requiring organizations to convert legacy data to an accessible format unless requested,
• requiring organizations to procure products and services used in the design of IC needs to be accessible.

Section 5

• reframing this section as management/performance clause whereby an organization shall develop, maintain, make public an alternate format plan that addresses:
  • how alternate formats can be accessed, and
  • when alternate formats will be delivered.
  • identifying circumstances where organizations would be required to provide alt formats.

Section 6

• confirming that the intent of this section was to drive a process of change by creating this separate requirement,
• confirming that accessible textbooks are possible – give publishers a timeframe to comply (could be procurement based),
• maintaining this requirement as it provides systemic change.

Section 7

• confirming that the democratic process has to be accessible,
• considering to either clarify the intent or move to transmittal letter for Elections Ontario (the committee requested an update on the status of the Elections Ontario process before deciding on where to place this requirement).

M11.7 Next steps

• By late-March, the support unit will provide the IC-SDC with:
  • a more comprehensive public review comments document, and
  • an updated draft standard to that will be vetted with the editorial SC and then updated and sent for full review by the IC-SDC.
• At Meeting 12 on April 1st and 2nd, the IC-SDC will review the updated draft standard.
• The IC-SDC will vote on the final proposed standard at Meeting 13, pending the successful request for a 1 month extension from the Minister.
• The Chair thanked the IC-SDC for their contributions over the 2 days and the Support Unit.

M11.8 Meeting adjournment

• IC-SDC Meeting 11 was adjourned at 3:15 PM.

Annex A – Summary of Public Review Findings from Oliver Wyman
Suggestions to improve the draft Standard

Section 1 – Scope & Application:

Timelines

• Respondents recognized a need to have target timelines for compliance.
• The disabled community is eager to see significant progress fast, and thus in most cases supported the proposed timelines.
• Some organizations said that the timelines might be achievable for Section 5.
• But virtually all organizations felt that timelines are impractical.
• Cost will be an inhibiting factor to the adherence to the proposed timelines.
• Limited availability of accessibility service providers.
• Lead time for planning and budgeting requires more that 2-3 years.
• The timelines do not align with the budget planning cycle.
• A number of regulated organizations said that they cannot comply because they rely on vendors/suppliers which are not subject to AODA.

• Some suggestions to improve timeline requirements:

• prioritization of requirements to clarify which outcomes should be achieved first rather than rigid timelines,
• a phased-in approach whereby compliance is expected by ultimate end date (i.e. 2025), leaving interim milestones up to organizations,
• delete timelines for I&IT/Business Enterprise systems,
• link timelines for compliance to the availability of funding support and accessibility support services,
• compliance deadlines for Class 1 and Class 2 be 5 years following the compliance deadline for Class 3.

Organizational Groupings

• Most respondents agreed that current grouping of organizations into different classes is appropriate because different organizations have different capabilities.
• The current grouping of organizations presents many problems.
• The “under 20 employees” is too limited. Many organizations with 20-100 employees are in the same circumstances as <20.
• Public organizations may not be able to comply because they rely on suppliers which are in different organizational class.
  
• Some suggestions to improve the organizational groupings
  • there are alternative groupings (other than number of employees) which may be more practical (e.g. sales volume, volunteer + FTE),
  • consider using a “<50” cutoff for Class 1,
  • some disability organizations thought volunteer-based organizations and zero-employee corporations should also be subject to the standard,
  • vary the requirements by class to reflect, but make the compliance timelines the same for all classes.
  • the Ontario Chamber of Commerce also believes there should be an exemption for very small employers (0-5 employees) as many of the Standards appear to be unrealistic and may prove to be quite costly for businesses to comply, in terms of both time and financial implications,
  • consider designating the hospital sector as a separate class (Class 4) and deferring the date of compliance to ensure that hospitals have sufficient time (OHA).

Section 2 – Organizational Requirements

• Support for organizational commitment and plain language policies, and recognitions that technology has reduced the cost of accessibility compliance.  Many organizations are already “leading the way” and they’d like to know that their efforts will be deemed to be compliant with proposed standard.
• Most organizations said that this section needs to be clarified considerably
• Concern regarding the time requirement and the complexity of the process involved in order for organizations to determine three key factors:   a) which elements of the Standard apply to them;  b) what technological accessibility features and options exist in order to establish their current compliance status; and c) what gaps exists that must be filled to achieve compliance.

• Some Suggestions:
  • reword to require “reasonable efforts” to comply with requirements,
  • duty to inform be limited to referring to individuals and not extended to communicating with the broader public,
  • training be combined/integrated with training for other standards, and harmonized with requirements of Occupational Health Safety Code,
  • section 2.8.2 be amended to read that “Organizations shall ensure that emergency and public safety information provided to employees be provided in a manner consistent with Section 5 and Schedule 1,
  • revise the timelines for compliance for the private and public sector to be consistent, and consolidate the training requirements from each standard into a common Training Standard.

Section 3 – IT-Based Info & Communication

• Timelines in regards to this section are widely viewed as impractical and unachievable.
• Insufficient internal capacity to meet requirements.
• Current technological limitations will affect the ability of organizations to comply with IT and communications systems requirements.
• Little customization control over material purchased from third party vendors.
• Discussion with developers is needed to customize technology.
  
  
• Some suggestions:
  • equirements around IT and business enterprise systems are beyond the scope of the work and should be removed from the Standard,
  • IT-based information and communications systems and business enterprise systems are interconnected and should be addressed accordingly,
  • grandfathering of legacy systems is an approach that should be given serious consideration, as it pertains to feasibility and ease of implementation, recognizes that accessibility concerns will be addressed as systems are upgraded,
  • many suggestions to improve clarity. 

Section 4 – Business Enterprise Systems

• Similar concerns to Section 3 of the standard, with many comments questioning the need for different sections for IT and Business Enterprise systems.
• Technological upgrading would come with a massive price if required in advance of regularly planned update/replacement.
• Issues with vendors were cited are reasons for cost and compliance impacts.

• Some suggestions:
  • grandfathering is an approach that should be given serious consideration, as it pertains to feasibility and ease of implementation, and recognizes that accessibility concerns will be addressed as systems are upgraded,
  • the proposed requirements set out in Section 4 are both beyond the scope of an initial standard and are not achievable given the current state of the economy.  It is therefore recommended that Section 4.0 be withdrawn (Ontario Restaurant Hotel & Motel Association),
  • should delete “Organizations shall ensure that user interfaces and data formats shall be compliant at the time they are made available for use by employees or the public” because user interface and data formats cannot easily be made accessible, independent of the other aspects of the Business Enterprise Systems that will take a much longer timeframe to achieve compliance. (RIM)

Section 5 – Accessible Formats

• Concerns highlight lack of clarity re what organizations actually have to do.
•  Many interpreted standard as requiring them to produce/print all alternative formats, ready in case there was a request.  Strong opposition to this interpretation;
  • waste of money if not requested,
  • materials quickly go out of date,
  • volume of materials that need to be converted is overwhelming.
• The technological specifications are too prescriptive.
• Vendor issues pose problems for compliance with accessible formats.
• It is unclear how third party materials would be handled.
• The issue of which documents are to be available is not clear.

• Some Suggestions
  • clarify “in response to” versus “pre-printing” accessible formats. Most organizations said that accessible formats should be provided in response to requests, within specified reasonable timeframes,
  • flexibility in the standards to allow for other accommodation options,
  • establish a base mandatory level of accessible formats for I&C, then let the organization tailor/expand in response to unique user needs & requests.

 Section 6 – Requirements for Educational Organizations and Regulatory Bodies

• Organizations emphasized the progress they have made in providing accessibly information, learning setting and documents.
• Debate about whether libraries must be included in the scope of Section 6. 
  • libraries should be exempt from Standard compliance because of the huge cost of compliance for which they have no way of getting funds,
  • libraries should be included because they are a critical provider of information and communication.
• Vendor and copyright issues pose a concern for Section 6 requirements. 

• Some suggestions
  • requirement to acquire an accessible text be the subject of further consultation between the publishing industry, the province of Ontario, and existing groups like CNIB that have services, infrastructure, and budgets in place to create and maintain libraries of accessible books,
  • clarify that Section 6 applies only to those organizations outlined in the definitions contained in section 8.0,
  • books be wholly exempted from this section of the standard, and that further consultation with the publishing industry,
  • clarify whether municipalities are or are not subject to this section.

Section 7 – Accessible Municipal and Provincial Elections

• Strongly held and divergent views on this topic, with disability groups strongly in favour, and municipalities concerned about negative impacts.
• Telephone and electronic voting is costly to the municipality, and the individual…which could discourage participation.
• In smaller municipalities and for elected trustees, the candidates have very little money and will pull out of elections.
• Concerns of security and privacy were voiced, especially in areas of high resident turnover.
• City has no authority to control the activities of candidates so it is unclear as to who would be responsible for the enforcement.

• Some suggestions
  • standard should authorize municipalities to continue to develop appropriate measures for accessible voting in consultation with their local Accessibility Advisory Committees or with people with disabilities,
  • section 7.0 in its entirety be removed from the draft Standard and referred by the committee to Elections Ontario,
  • if section 7 remains in the standard, the Provincial Government should create a program to fund accessibility enhancements for municipal elections.
     

Definitions & Schedules

• Many stakeholders felt that definitions need to be clarified, although some felt definitions were clear and appropriate.
• Some terms (e g, “Braille ready”) are defined in Schedule I rather than in Section 8.

• Some suggestions for Schedule 1
  • plain language guide or guides to the technical requirements,
  • requirement of (e) that software applications be compatible with “current” assistive technology is too subjective and needs to be more flexible given the pace of development with assistive technologies,
  • apply requirements to recently implemented systems because most user interfaces can be modified to conform to the proposed Standard; however may need to grandfather older applications may have been developed prior to the newer assistive technologies being available.

• Some suggestions for Schedule 2
  • Define the term “municipality” to include local boards as defined in the Municipal Affairs Act.

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