Barrier Free Manitoba

The Disability Issues Office has just released a 56-page guide (only available as a PDF) for public sector organizations on "How to Create Your Accessibility Plan." The guide was developed to help public sector organizations develop Accessibility Plans that are required under the Accessibility for Manitobans Act (AMA).

As part of the AMA, Accessibility Plans must be developed by all government of Manitoba departments and large public sector bodies with significant interaction with the public are required to create Accessibility Plans. This includes government departments, crown corporations, regional health organizations, colleges and school divisions and cities of more than 10,000.

These plans must be made public. The plans must also reviewed and renewed every two years.

Smaller public sector bodies and government agencies will also have to create Accessibility Plans but these won't be required until 2017.

The guide has many strengths and is one of the most useful resources developed by the DIO in recent years.

There is, however, one area that needs improvement: the listing of disability resource information and contacts (Appendix C). The guide lists only 22 local services and organizations that can help public sector agencies respond to common barriers to accessibility. While the guide presents these only as "examples" of community resources, it is a very partial and selective list given that there are more than 300 non-profit disability organizations operating in Manitoba and many profit making firms that offer disability-related services.

How and why the DIO chose the 22 local services and organizations remains unclear. What is clear is that the current list does not provide a level playing field for the many organizations with primary mandates to represent and/or serve Manitobans with disabilities.

We have already recommended that the DIO address this significant limitation in revised versions of the guide - hopefully to be released soon.

By the way, Barrier-Free Manitoba is not one of the organizations listed in the guide. As an advocacy initiaitive, our preference would be to not be listed as we do not provide any direct services.

As they also say, "don't let perfect be the enemy of the good" (i.e., you need to start somewhere and nothing you develop will ever be perfect). The current guide is a very good start. But clearly, the listing needs major improvement.