2023 Progress Report on the Copyright Board of Canada Accessibility Plan 2023-2025

For Feedback on this Report

Feedback on the Copyright Board of Canada’s (the Board) Accessibility plan and this progress report can be submitted in the following ways:

The Board acknowledges feedback using the same method by which it was received. While the Board cannot acknowledge receipt of anonymous feedback, it will consider the feedback appropriately.

The Board is dedicated to continuous improvement and aims to deliver accessible services to our employees, collaborators and stakeholders. The Secretary General and the Board’s Accessibility Champion are responsible for regularly monitoring and evaluating the feedback, raising it with their interdepartmental communities of practice, and reporting any relevant feedback quarterly to the Board management table to ensure its consideration in Board future plans.

Message from Copyright Board of Canada Accessibility Champion

I am proud to be the Accessibility Champion at the Board, especially since there is lots of work to be done. The Board is responsive and interested in becoming a more accessible place to work and visit. A lot of the initial work in making the Board an accessible place is identifying and addressing barriers. And there are a number of physical and non-physical barriers which remain.

I liaise regularly and trade lessons learned with various groups that promote the rights of persons with disabilities, including with my colleagues at Innovation, Science, and Economic Development Canada (ISED), the department through whose Minister the Board reports to Parliament. As a small department, the Board is able to be nimble in responding to requests for accommodation. That said, because the Board is so small, it cannot acquire expertise in every area of accessibility. This is why I truly appreciate our connections with those in other departments, which have proven very useful to date, and I hope will grow in the coming year.

Introduction

As the Board continues the journey to becoming an accessible workplace, we are happy to share our Accessibility Progress Report. It demonstrates our commitment to removing barriers to accessibility for our employees and our stakeholders.

In 2023, the Board made its first efforts in implementing its 2023-2025 Accessibility plan, which was originally developed in partnership with a small group of employees who self-identified as persons with a disability, with managers responsible for key actions in its implementation, with the Board’s first Accessibility Champion, and the Senior Official responsible for Diversity and Inclusion.

The purpose of this report is to share the progress made in the following areas of focus under the Accessibility Act:

  • Employment
  • The Built Environment
  • Information and Communication Technologies
  • Communication (other than Information and Communication Technologies)
  • The Procurement of Goods, Services, and Facilities
  • The Design and Delivery of Programs and Services
  • Transportation

Culture Change

The report also includes progress in the area of culture change as a core element of the Board’s workplace, highlighted as an important priority area in its 2023-2025 Accessibility plan. One of the biggest lessons learned this year is that, given its small size, the Board must often re-prioritize its commitments due to unexpected pressures. This has had an affect on the timing in its delivery of certain accessibility initiatives. Even so, the Board has maintained a solid representation of persons who self-identify as having a disability, well over 10% of its total workforce.

However, it underscores the need for the Board, as a micro-organization of 25 employees, to participate in a broader robust network for information, idea and experience exchange, to sustain its momentum and adopt successful tools and practices created by others. This year, the Board emphasized increasing employee awareness and connection with these networks, to identify and address accessibility challenges and opportunities in the workplace, and to prepare for the needs of our existing and future staff.

Progress

  • Developed a number of connections with interdepartmental accessibility networks so employees could share their experiences and learn from a larger pool of persons with disabilities in the Public Service.
  • Newly appointed Champion for Accessibility opened channels for continuous awareness-raising and feedback outside of the organization, and shared this information back to employees on a regular basis. Channels included:
    • ISED Persons with Disabilities network,
    • ISED Accessibility Feedback Panel (working on better individual accommodations),
    • Interdepartmental Accessibility Community of Practice,
    • Accessibility Ambassadors Network,
    • ISED Neurodivergence Teams Chat,
    • Infinity - Network for Neurodivergent Public Servants,
  • Board Accessibility Champion, supported by our organization, also dedicated their time and space to a promotional video with Canada’s Chief Accessibility Officer, featuring our Champion, and filmed in our own offices in Ottawa.
  • The 2023-2024 performance commitments contained indicators for all staff responsible for work on implementation of the Accessibility plan, which will be assessed in March 2024.
  • The Board created a number of formal and informal opportunities for dialogue among its employees who self-identify as persons with disabilities, as well as more generally with all Board employees.

Employment

In its Accessibility Plan 2023-2025, the Board recognized that recruitment and retention of persons with disabilities depended on removing and preventing barriers, as well as promoting accessibility in the workplace. The Board committed to building accessibility awareness and confidence within the organization, and rolling out new tools and resources to recognize and value persons with disabilities in the workplace.

Progress

  • Presentation on Accessibility Plan made to management table and at all-staff meeting in Spring 2023.
  • Follow-up presentation made to management table, and at all staff town hall in November 2023, along with invitation to internal one-on-one consultations with employees.
  • New governance structure adopted in November 2023 now provides for systematic accessibility updates and discussion, led by the Accessibility Champion at the monthly in-person all-staff meeting.
  • Accessibility issues integrated into the Board’s 2024-2027 Human Resources Strategy by managers.
  • Mandatory training on accessibility in the Public Service for all employees scheduled for fiscal year 2024-2025.
  • Managers provided with tools and templates to incorporate practice of mitigating biases and barriers in formal assessment for all staffing processes, in line with recent amendments to the Public Service Employment Act.
  • The Board has been sharing information with its employees on the Government of Canada Workplace Accessibility Passport, in preparation for its launch on the Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS) Portal in 2024.

Built Environment

Building on its previous actions to increase the accessibility of its hybrid work arrangements, and to redesign offices to meet different ergonomic needs, the Board committed to review its safety and resource plans with the mindset of “inclusive by design” and “accessible by default’’.

Progress

  • Lockers made available to all employees, for use and storage of their accessible equipment at the office.
  • Participated in accessibility assessment by Public Service and Procurement Canada (PSPC) of Board’s physical headquarters; follow-up plan in development.
  • Re-evaluation of work arrangements and needs for each employee to take place in preparation for fiscal year 2024-2025.
  • Equipment and any other accessibility requirements systematically discussed as part of onboarding new employees.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

The Board’s ICT services are primarily delivered by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) and Shared Services Canada (SSC). It remains challenging for our very small corporate team to research potential IT solutions to accessibility issues. This year, no requests from staff for IT-related accommodation were received.

Progress

  • the Board is ready to renegotiate its IT-related service agreements with both ISED and SSC starting in 2024-2025 to proactively identify tools and supports for accessible ICT that are or could be employed by Board staff and Board Members.
  • The Board maintains regular contact with the Accessibility, Accommodations and Adaptive Computer Technology initiative at SSC, and the Lending Library Services Pilot Project to eventually facilitate quick access to short-term accommodations adaptive technology, services, and tools for Board employees.

Communications other than ICT

For the past four years, the Board has prioritized the delivery of its communications and products to the public in plain language, and in line with accessibility standards, to meet its access to justice goals.

Progress

  • Repeated its plain language training, led by the Canadian Institute for the Administration of Justice (CIAJ), for all Board members and employees, in both official languages. This was a refresher for some employees and entirely new for employees who joined the Board since the last time this training was offered.
  • Developed templates for online public content in compliance with the latest Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
  • Ensured that external contracts with its online services are compliant with current accessibility standards and obligations.

Procurement of goods, services, and facilities

With a total operating budget of approximately $800,000/ year, the Board does relatively little procurement of goods and services. That said, the Board will contribute, to the greatest extent possible, to ensuring procured goods and services are accessible by design so that Canadians with disabilities can use them without adaptation.

Progress

  • Put in place a service agreement with the Parole Board of Canada (PBC) for procurement services, and is actively negotiating procurement planning and tracking to include measures for accessibility.

The design and delivery of programs and services

Since implementing Its Accessibility Plan 2023-2025, the Board has paid greater attention to accessibility in its internal and external policies and practices. More formal efforts in this area will take place in the coming years, internally as managers implement the Board’s new Human Resources Strategy, and externally as the Board hosts its next hearings, and its next broad consultation efforts.

Progress

  • Accessibility issues integrated into the Board’s 2024-2027 Human Resources Strategy by managers.
  • Worked in collaboration with Canadian Digital Service (CDS), updated online forms for external stakeholder information filing, respecting Treasury Board accessibility standards for digital forms.

Transportation

This priority area under the Accessible Canada Act does not apply to the Board.

Consultations

The Accessibility Champion and the Secretary General initiated direct one-on-one consultations in November 2023 with a view to better understanding the challenges and interests of its employees who identify as persons with disabilities. The uptake was very limited, and insufficient to inform future planning and action. The Board has now developed a new consultation approach via short online survey, with possibilities for follow-up one-on-one consultations. The survey will launch in Spring 2024.

Feedback

Since the publication of its Accessibility Plan, the Board has not received feedback related to accessibility through its established feedback processes - telephone, mail, email, or an online anonymous feedback form.