Introduction

Accessibility affects every aspect of how we inhabit the world, from technology to home and city design, to places where we work and play, to legal and policy frameworks.  Accessibility as an issue is sometimes obvious at the surface, but more frequently is buried beneath layers of (often unintentional) exclusion, ableism, and a stubbornly persistent empathy gap between those who move through and access the world relatively unimpeded, and those who encounter multiple barriers to participation, expression and the opportunity to thrive.  Accessibility and living barrier-free is a human right, yet there is significant work to be done to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to participate, contribute, and flourish.

The central question driving this scan is as follows:

How might we maximize accessibility to promote human flourishing?

In the face of the many barriers encountered in many domains – from the built environment to the workplace, to the digital realm, and beyond – the diverse stories and collective ‘voice’ of Canada’s large and growing disability community continues to grow.  While this voice in many ways has been at the margins, for example with respect to the current wave of introspection and action around equity, diversity and inclusion, the disability voice is nonetheless becoming more important to the design of policy, places, practices, and opportunities for participation across all sectors.

Drawing from our  experience at field-scanning and trend-scanning, the Institute for Community Prosperity was engaged by ATCO to produce this scan of access and accessibility, primarily as it relates to the issues facing adults in Canada living with a disability. This is a scan of context, system dynamics, and innovations with a primary audience of people who are relatively new to learning about accessibility. This scan is not a systems analysis, strictly speaking, because the premise  for this work is not one ‘problem’ but rather a series of diverse challenges, trends, and opportunities related to the domain of accessibility.  So, while systems mapping tools are used here and there, it is not principally a mapping exercise.

Initiated and commissioned by the ATCO Transformation Team, this scan will inform the company’s purpose-driven Research and Development (R&D) and transformation, which might include both commercial and philanthropic interests. But it is also intended to serve as a useful primer for students, practitioners, funders, policy-makers, and the general public. The ATCO Transformation Team requested that this scan go beyond a functionalist inventory of policies, players and technologies, looking deeper at the array of challenges, underlying factors and interconnections.

Most people will experience barriers to access during their lives.  This means that everyone should be engaged in conversations about accessibility, and everyone – in their home, work, social relations, and community life, should be interested – and will stand to benefit – from improving access.  This scan, introductory in nature, seeks to mobilize knowledge from those working to enhance accessibility in many realms to inform a broad general audience.  It also shares insights into content the public may not have easy access to, including through paywalled academic databases.  On the other hand, this scan may have limited value for people already heavily involved in this domain, including disability advocates, activists, or policy specialists.

The scan draws on a review of data and literature on the topic of accessibility, including relevant literature from think tanks, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and foundations, as well as from academia (in particular, systematic reviews, meta-analyses and public policy papers). The scan is also informed by a series of conversations with key identified community practitioners, funders, consultants, academics, and advocates, including those with lived experience with accessibility challenges. Importantly, all partners have committed to making the report open access and freely available as a public resource.

The scope of this scan and our positionality an reflexivity statements will provide additional introductory information in the two upcoming chapters:

Scope and Focus

Positionality and Reflexivity Statement