May 31 – June 6 is National Access Awareness Week, and also marks the tenth anniversary of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005. For 10 years, public, private and non-profit organizations across Ontario have been working together to improve the everyday lives of people with disabilities.
At Sheridan, we are committed to improving access for students, employees and the general public. Following is a brief summary of some of the initiatives undertaken to date:
- Since the spring of 2014, Human Resources has enrolled over 4600 part time and full time employees in “Inclusion at Sheridan – Human Rights and Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) ”, an online training course in Sheridan’s learning management system.
- Accessible Learning supports 2300 Sheridan students with disabilities at all 4 campuses. These supports include academic accommodations, provision of American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters, and disability-specific advising and referrals.
- This January, Ontario college libraries partnered with the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) and the Internet Archive to bring the Accessible Content E-Portal Service (ACE) to current Sheridan students, faculty and staff with a verified perceptual disability. ACE is a repository of thousands of books in accessible format. The ACE project supports legislative compliance with the AODA January 2015 Print Deadline for Libraries.
- In recognition of Sheridan’s commitment to accessibility and to ensure the voices of our community are heard as we plan for an increasingly accessible and inclusive future, the Advisory Council for Sheridan Accessibility (ACSA) continues to meet in 2015 and in the spring provided key input into specific exterior design elements of the Hazel McCallion Campus expansion as per the Design of Public Spaces Standard under the AODA.
- To help all Sheridan employees understand how to create accessible documents – a series of 4 short video tutorials have been created on accessible spreadsheets, accessible PDFs, accessible word documents and accessible power point presentations.
National Access Awareness Week was established in 1988 in response to a request from Rick Hansen following his Man in Motion World Tour. Its aim is to bring together, in a spirit of partnership, people with disabilities, organizations who serve them, business, labour and governments to affect meaningful changes in the daily living of people with disabilities.