Working for Barrier Removal in the ICT Area: Creating a More Accessible and Inclusive Canada

Abstract

This article describes the rights-based approach to access to information and communications technologies (ICT) used by the Council of Canadians with Disabilities (CCD). This approach challenges the thinking of policymakers, those in industry, and others who argue that access to ICT can be achieved through a variety of economic, business, or market-based perspectives. It argues that these approaches have failed to deliver accessible ICT to people with disabilities, and that improved legislation, regulation, policy, and programs are required to remove the barriers to ICT experienced by people with disabilities in Canada.

Keywords:

• accessibility
• accessible
• disabilities
• disability
• inclusion
• inclusive
• information and communications technologies
• information technologies, rights

I express deep appreciation to editors Dr. Deborah Stienstra and Gary Annable for their leadership in the Dis-IT Research Alliance, for their willingness to mentor an author inexperienced in the demands of a peer reviewed journal, and for their extensive and skillful editing of several drafts.

Notes

NOTES

¹CCD is a national organization that speaks for people with disabilities. Its members include 10 provincial or territorial disability organizations, 5 national disability specific organizations, a national disabled women's organization, and an organization of postsecondary students with disabilities organizations. Its web site is http://www.ccdonline.ca.

² http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/enable.

³Universal design has been defined as design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without adaptation or specialized design (Center for Universal Design, nd).