Originally conceived by the Canadian Hearing Society and the Council of Canadians with Disabilities in item 4.1 at this link in relation to proceeding CRTC 2008-8 which led to the CRTC’s Accessiblity Policy 2009-0430, as seen in paragraph 4.
4. Disability, Gender and Diversity Lens
4.1 CCD recommends that the CRTC develop a disability, gender and diversity lens to ensure that the issues of women and all marginalized people, including people with disabilities, First Nations and racial minorities, are considered as the CRTC undertakes its mandated responsibilities. CCD notes that the Canadian Hearing Society in its response has raised concerns regarding “[1] CRTC’s personnel hiring, retention and promoting employees with disabilities…[2] a lack of internal access and accommodation policies in the CRTC…” (CHS 2008 p. 5) A disability, gender and diversity lens could assist the CRTC address problems such as these as well as assist it with decision-making processes associated with licensing and regulation. Furthermore, such a lens could be used when selecting commissioners to ensure that commissioners have adequate disability expertise.
Whereas, one of the members of the DWCC-CSSSC Committee coined the term “Accessibility Lens,” which is defined as:
“An Accessibility Lens is a tool for identifying and clarifying issues affecting persons with disabilities used by policy and program developers and analysts to access and address the impact of all initiatives (policies, programs or decisions) on persons with disabilities. It is also a resource in creating policies and programs reflective of the rights and needs of persons with disabilities. We call “Accessibility Lens” by place an experience person with disability in senior position with decision-making,” revised to create appropriate terminology for our work, by Jeffrey Beatty.
Here’s an image created by Jeffrey himself:
