Barrier Free Manitoba

Barrier-Free Manitoba is pleased to have played a lead role in the call for the Province to commit to the development and enforcement of a strong accessible education standard under the landmark Accessibility for Manitobans Act (click here for more information on the June 30 letter to Minister Scott Fielding).

Having not yet received that commitment, we are taking the logical next step - gathering the information needed to strengthen the case for this missing but essential standard.

And we need your help.

The Surveys

Barrier-Free Manitoba and Education Solutions Manitoba have developed online surveys for three sets of primary stakeholder groups:

• The parents/families of students with disabilities
• Students with disabilities (Grade 7 to post-secondary)
• Educational staff and officials who have the responsibility to provide or oversee the provision of quality education for students with disabilities.

Each of these stakeholder groups have, and can offer, unique and valuable insights into the barriers they face.

Comprehensive in design, the surveys cover all disabilities and include core questions, as well as level-specific questions on:

• Early childhood education/child care
• Nursery to Grade 12
• Post-secondary

A survey takes as little as five minutes to complete. For persons wanting to provide detailed responses, completing a survey might take as long as 30 minutes. The surveys are anonymous and we will not be gathering any identifying information from respondents (unless they wish to receive updates on developments related to the accessible education standard).

Your Help

A robust response to the surveys will be critical to providing the most reliable and useful results. Toward that end, our goal is to ensure that every Manitoban who is involved with disability and education systems is made aware of, and has the chance to complete, the surveys by the deadline for responses (December 15, 2017).

We know that reaching that goal will not be easy and that’s why we need your help.

1. Complete a Survey

If you are a student with a disability, a parent of a student with a disability, or you work with students with disabilities in our education systems, please complete a survey forthwith. Just click on the applicable one:

• Parents/families
• Students
• Education staff/officials

2. Get the Word Out Far and Wide

We bet that you know a lot of people who are involved with disability and education systems. Please actively reach out to them and encourage them to complete the applicable survey.

The easiest way to do this is by sending the link to this page in an email message to your family, friends and colleagues.

A second option is to send personal email message with a link to one or more of the survey to those you know who are involved with disability and education systems. To help you with this, here are the URLs to the three surveys:

• Parents/families: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/MbEducationParents
• Students: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/MBEducationStudents
• Education staff/officials: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/MBEducationStaff

A third option is to share the news of these survey with leaders and representatives of:

• The educational organizations that serve students with disabilities,
• Organizations that represent staff working with students with disabilities
• Parent/student groups with strong interests in equitable access to education

As you might imagine, we’d much rather people hear about the surveys from multiple sources than to not to hear about them at all.

We still have a long way to go to ensure that all Manitobans with disabilities have equitable access to quality education. We believe that both the call for a strong accessible education standard and these surveys represent vital paths forward.