The Saskatchewan Accessibility Act requires all public sector organizations to develop and publicly post their first Accessibility Plan by Dec. 3.
The Prince Albert Catholic School Division Board had a look at their Accessibility Plan during their regular meeting on Monday.
These plans must identify, remove and prevent barriers for people with disabilities. The areas to do this include employment, built environments, communications and service delivery.
Director of Education Lorel Trumier, who presented the report, said that it’s very significant.
“We always want to improve our accessibility to our schools, whether it’s for physical or digital or ensuring that our properties are accessible for people that require use of our building,” Trumier said.
Organizations are required to consult with persons with disabilities, apply principles of universal design, and provide a mechanism for public feedback.
“It’s long overdue,” Trumier said. “We’ve been doing it to some degree over the years, but this is a much more intentional approach by developing a plan after a gap analysis or an assessment of our schools.”
The Accessibility Plan identifies barriers and outlines actions to ensure compliance with Legislation and promote full participation for all.
The plan is guided by feedback from administrators, students and families. Trumier said it reflects a shared commitment to inclusion and will be reviewed annually.
“We have already done an assessment on all of our schools based on all of the categories that we outlined,” she explained.
“That was a huge endeavour. We’ve been working on that since September.”
That assessment included everything from washrooms, classrooms, parking spots all the way to the division’s website.
Trumier said they’ve developed an individual plan for each school in the division based on their facility. Each school also conducted a gap analysis to see what could be improved.
“We’ve reviewed that information. We’ve created a plan per school, per item that was outlined in our appendix,” Trumier said.
She added that they have created some large targets for the three-year plan and they will post the plan on their website.
“Our board is also interested in maintaining this on an ongoing basis,” she said. “The plan will be a continued work in progress.
“It will be a rolling plan. There will be a year added every year moving forward.”
The division has set aside some funding from Preventative Maintenance and Renewal (PMR) in order to be prepared for eventualities that could arise to have schools in compliance. Trumier said that the division has started in a good place.
“We had established a PMR or budget for expenses that could relate to our accessibility plan so that we would have the means to do what we need to do in our schools,” she said. “I feel like we’re in a good position to start the process and actually move to changing things now that we’ve done our assessment.”
Priorities include improving access through automatic doors and other means, upgrading washrooms, outdoor spaces, learning environments.
Additional focus areas include making all spaces such as office environments to support mobility, sensory needs and comfort.
The plan also addressed communications barriers by providing materials in multiple formats and training staff to deliver accessible communication.
Implementation begins in 2025 with a focus on physical access, communication and awareness.
After the plan is officially posted then the work can begin on awareness around the plan.
“The plan will get posted on the website and then we’ll have some work that’s going to occur from raising awareness to supporting our properties and making sure that we do what we can in this area,” Trumier said.
At the meeting the Board approved the intent to create the Accessibility Policy and approved the Accessibility Plan.
Plans must be updated at least every three years to ensure compliance and a commitment to accessibility.
michael.oleksyn@paherald.sk.ca
