Phase 1 Accessibility Strategy - Executive Summary
This is an executive summary of a larger report. The full Accessibility Strategy report (in English) can be found here.
Persons with disabilities refers to those who experience physical, mental health, cognitive, communication, intellectual, sensory, or age-related impairments whether they are seniors, others with age-related impairments, or people with lived experience of mental health concerns or substance use issues. For the purposes of this strategy, the City will use the term, persons with disabilities, which will reference the complexity and diversity of lived experiences as outlined above and adopts a definition of disability that is broad and inclusive.
The City of Vancouver is making an Accessibility Strategy. This is a plan for the City to focus on accessibility. Accessibility is needed for everyone to have a good life. Accessibility needs can be social, economic, cultural, spiritual, and political.
Anyone can experience disability. Temporary, periodic, or permanent changes in functioning at some point in life is a part of being human. Accessibility is the practice of making a place usable by as many people as possible. Accessibility means taking away the barriers that stop people from participating in society. Accessibility is about inclusion.
Accessibility means all people can:
- Access services and programs they need
- Get around in the city where they live and work
- Feel like they belong when spending time in public places
Accessibility needs are different for everyone. To better understand the views of persons with disabilities the City follows the value of “nothing about us without us.” The goals in making the City’s first Accessibility Strategy were to:
- Ask for and use suggestions from persons with disabilities
- Use accessible practices to create spaces for safe and honest conversations
- Make sure people not always included were invited to have their say
This report describes how staff met with community members to get feedback. It gives an overview of what was heard from the disability community. There are some messages that people felt were important for the City to pay attention to as the Accessibility Strategy is being made.
The 7 main messages from the Community for the City of Vancouver include:
1. Engage with people with lived experience meaningfully: include and listen to people with disabilities.
- Include people with many types of disabilities in decision-making activities.
- Support “nothing about us without us” by taking away barriers to participation.
2. Increase public education and awareness to counter ableism: teach others about ableism and how it affects everyone.
- Understand ableism is the false belief that people with disabilities are less valuable than other people.
- Learn to know when people with disabilities may be experiencing not only ableism but also racism, sexism or ageism.
3. Increase understanding of the full spectrum of disability across all City departments and related boards: grow staff knowledge about different types of disability.
- Understand disabilities can be permanent, temporary, invisible or might change over time.
- Consider all types of disability in staff training, decision-making and event planning activities.
4. Shift to an accessibility culture: make sure accessibility is important and part of the way things get done.
- Only allow community and commercial projects if they are accessible and offer accessibility education to the community.
- Offer work opportunities for people with disabilities to be a part of the decision-making process
5. Apply an accessibility lens: use an accessibility lens as a tool to help staff understand things from a different view.
- Support the full inclusion and participation of all residents and employees.
- Find out what people need to take part in projects or events and remove the barriers.
6. Instill universal design principles: the City should be made for everyone, not only people with typical abilities.
- Limit accommodation needs and challenges because of badly made systems and structures.
- Make places for all people to begin with, and accommodations are easier to get when needed.
7. Implement accountability mechanisms: put in place ways to check the strategy is working.
- Understand the important of the strategy and how it affects people.
- Get feedback and make the strategy useful for the people it is there to help.
This report was the first step to getting a fuller picture of accessibility in the City. A more detailed study of what we heard is happening. It will include information from other sources such as reports from City Advisory Committees and conversations with City staff from all departments.
All of this will help make the draft Accessibility Strategy that will be presented to Council in Spring 2022. A larger community engagement process will then take place on the draft Accessibility Strategy to get more input from the Community about accessibility.
