CASHRA Accessibility Guidelines & Checklist
PURPOSE
The Canadian Association of Statutory Human Rights Agencies (CASHRA) and its members are committed to the core values of accessibility, inclusion and accommodation.
These guidelines were created to help CASHRA ensure its documents, communications, meetings and events, including conferences and training sessions, are accessible for people with human rights related needs. An Accessibility Checklist was developed as a guide to the Guidelines.
STATEMENT
CASHRA members and other participants at CASHRA meetings and events, as well as individuals who correspond with CASHRA or access CASHRA’s website or social media, have the right to accessibility, inclusion and accommodation of their needs in accordance with human rights law across Canada.
CASHRA will take steps to ensure its in-person and virtual meetings, events, documents and communications, are accessible for its members, other participants and the general public.
Accordingly, CASHRA members agree to:
- Procure and provide accessible facilities for meetings and events
- Prepare, acquire or convert all CASHRA member and third party documents in electronic accessible format and distribute electronically to everyone at the same time by default, rather than only upon request
- Provide appropriate communication supports such as sign language interpreters or real time captioning services for virtual or in-person meetings or events upon request, or by default once an ongoing need is established or an event open to the public does not require advance registration
- Designate and train staff on best practice standards for providing accessible meetings and events, electronic documents1 and communications or other supports, and/or hire external service providers if necessary, and
- Share among CASHRA members any accessibility costs not normally covered by a member or a participant’s associated employer or organization or service provider, applying the same formula used for other CASHRA budgeting purposes, and
- Accommodate any and all individual human rights related needs unless to do so would cause undue hardship in accordance with respective jurisdictional human rights legislation.
1 See, for example, online tutorials for creating accessible documents (Algonquin College Accessibility Office):
www.algonquincollege.com/accessibility-office/accessible-education-tools/creating-accessible-documents/