SUBMISSION OF ARCH DISABILTY LAW CENTRE
ON THE
REVISED PROPOSED INTEGRATED ACCSESIBILITY REQUIREMENTS
MARCH 18, 2011
Dianne Wintermute and Ed Montigny
ARCH Disability law Centre
425 Bloor Street East, Suite 110
Toronto, OntarioM4W 3R5
Tel: (416) 482-8255 Toll-Free: 1-866-482-2724
TTY: (416) 482-1254 Toll-Free: 1-866-482-2728
FAX: (416) 482-2981 Toll-Free: 1-866-881-2723
ARCH DISABILTIY LAW CENTRE’S SUBMISSIONS ON THE
REVISED PROPOSED INTEGRATED ACCESSIBILITY STANDARD (PIAS) REQUIREMENTS
I.ABOUT ARCH
ARCH Disability Law Centre (ARCH) is a not-for-profit community legal aid clinic dedicated to defending and advancing the equality rights of people with disabilities in Ontario. ARCH is governed by a volunteer board of directors, a majority of whom are people with disabilities. ARCH Provides summary advice and referral services to Ontarians with disabilities and represents individuals as well as disability organizations in test case litigation at all levels of tribunal and courts. We provide education to people with disabilities on disability rights and to the legal profession on disability law. We also make submissions to government on matters of policy and law reform. Information about ARCH can be obtained from our website at
2.OVERVIEW
ARCH wishes to express disappointment in the revised proposed integrated accessibility standard. The AODA offered persons with disabilities hope that they were participating in a process that would result in groundbreaking legislation, legislation that would offer a model to the rest of the world as to how to deal with accommodation and human rights for persons with disabilities. There is little in the revised proposed integrated accessibility standards that lives up those hopes. These standards have turned into a set of useful guidelines, nothing more. The vast majority of organizations are exempt from a number of the more crucial and meaningful provisions of the standards; there is an extremely limited public complaints process and only weak provisions to ensure compliance. There are no individual remedies for persons with disabilities affected by non-compliance.
In our earlier submissions, ARCH raised a number of issues that we felt were of crucial importance to efficacy of the AODA as a whole. There is little indication in the revised proposed integrated standards (PIAS) that our earlier comments had any impact upon the revised version of PIAS. Please see our earlier submissions of October 15, 2010 (attached)
In addition to our earlier submissions, we add or reiterate the following points:
3.EXCESSIVE EXEMPTIONS RISK RENDERING PIAS IRRELEVANT
ARCH wishes to express our extreme dismay that the numerous exemptions offered to “small designated public sector organizations” and other “small organizations” have been maintained in the revised version of the proposed integrated standards. If all organizations employing fewer than 50 persons remain exempt from crucial aspects of the legislation, such as the requirement to file accessibility reports (s. 8(1)), or the need to maintain records of activities such as training (s.7(5)) the proposed integrated standards will effectively be rendered irrelevant. As long as the exemptions, which apply to over 90% of the organizations in Ontario, are maintained, the impact of the proposed integrated accessibility standards will be limited at best. The reasons given in s. 8(1) for permitting these exemptions simply do not justify the exemptions.
ARCH feels that a far more reasonable set of exemptions were created in the Customer Service Standards. In that Standard most exemptions were limited to organizations employing fewer than 20 persons. ARCH feels it is necessary to lower the exemptions offered in the PIAS from organizations employing fewer than 50 persons to organizations employing fewer than 20 persons. This set of exemptions would relieve truly small organizations from any onerous obligations, while still compelling the majority of organizations to comply.
RECOMMENDATION:The exemptions offered to ‘small organizations’ should be reduced to apply only to organizations employing fewer than 20 persons.
4.COMPLIANCE MECHANISMS ARE WEAK
The stated exemptions will also undermine any attempts to enforce compliance. Even if we ignore the problems inherent in self-reporting compliance, the exemptions create a situation where the Director will not even have self-serving information about the vast majority of organizations in the province. It will be difficult or impossible to identify instances of non-compliance if the vast majority of organizations have no obligation to submit accessibility reports.
It is not clear that the Director has any other reasonable means to acquire such information. Where is the information required to identify non-compliance going to come from? Section 82(7) of the proposed integrated accessibility standards outlines some process for gathering information from organizations that have no obligation to provide accessibility reports. However, there are serious weaknesses in this section. If no information is provided to the Director by an organization and there is no provision to receive public complaints, exactly what will trigger the Director to request any particular information from an organization? There is no indication that sufficient inspectors will be provided to ensure that any more than a small number of instances of non-compliance will be identified.
Even if instances of non-compliance are identified, the penalties associated with non-compliance are too weak and the enforcement mechanisms too lenient to provide any real opportunities to force compliance upon unwilling organizations. The extensive exemptions offered to small organizations also means that only a small fraction of organizations are even likely to face scrutiny. Overall, it appears that the government is willing to allow organizations to decide for themselves whether to comply with the PIAS or not. It appears that there is little intention of ensuring that those organizations who chose to ignore the PIAS will face any meaningful penalties.
RECOMMENDATION:a) The enforcement and compliance mechanisms must be strengthened.
b) Penalties for non-compliance must be more severe; and,
c) more effective means must be found to identify non-compliance among small organizations (eliminating exemptions for organizations employing more than 20 persons would be an obvious way of accomplishing this goal).
5.OVERALL PIAS APPEARS TO BE NO MORE THAN GUIDELINES
The basic problem with the PIAS is that, in their current form, they are no more than helpful guidelines for those organizations who wish to comply. They fall far short of being anything more. Organizations are already obliged to meet higher standards of accommodation and accessibility pursuant to the Ontario Human Rights Code. It is not clear what PIAS offers to persons with disabilities that most organizations are not already required to provide.
The hope that the AODA process would produce groundbreaking legislation that ensured accommodation for all Ontarians has largely been dashed. The PIAS will have almost no impact upon the vast majority of organizations in the province, meaning that the vast majority of organizations that people with disabilities deal with on a daily basis will be largely unchanged and unaffected. Overall, it is not clear what positive changes people with disabilities will experience as a result of these integrated standards. Some organizations may comply, others may not, and, given the extremely limited individualcomplaints process, there is virtually nothing a person with a disability can do if an organization fails to comply. This is reinforced by having no individual redress if the standards are violated or simply not followed.
The compliance process ensures that even if an organization is identified as non-compliant, little will happen for a long time – and even if action is taken against an organization, the fines and penalties are minimal. This is all within a context of the PIAS establishing standards that fall short of the standards Ontario organizations are already compelled to meet under the Human Rights Code.
The people of Ontario, especially persons with disabilities had hoped for (and were promised) much more.