The 海角社区 campuses will soon be bustling with the vital energy of orientation: those few weeks where students, faculty and staff — new and returning alike — begin to (re)orient themselves with the physical and digital spaces, schedules and services that are all part of the academic term. For the , learning how to navigate a university can take months instead of weeks. There are many barriers embedded in our spaces, practices, policies and services and information about more accessible options can be hard to find. At the 海角社区, this is about to change.
The 海角社区 has launched the Disability Cultures and Access Hub (DCA Hub): a database to assist students, faculty and staff experiencing disability-related barriers in finding accessible services, supports and resources. The DCA Hub is also designed to support all community members to improve accessibility, implement accommodations and engage with disability cultures in everything we do.
The DCA Hub currently includes entries covering the following topics: Teaching + Learning, Urgent Supports, Accessing Services, Accommodations and Disability Cultures. Over the coming year, we will collaborate with units and disability knowledge holders across the University to create more accessible practices, procedures and resources that will both deepen and broaden the DCA Hub’s offerings.
The DCA Hub was developed through Disability Cultures + Access (DCA): a cross-university initiative housed in the Office of the Vice-Provost (Access, Community and Belonging). The DCA supports, coordinates and prioritizes efforts to address systemic disability-related barriers that impact multiple units and faculties. The DCA Hub was conceived and designed by disability knowledge holders on the Council for Disability Cultures and Access, and involves ongoing collaborations with dozens of units across the University.
We are especially grateful to units who contributed their passionate and skilled staff to the launch team that brought the DCA Hub to life: Rukiyah Ghani (Centre for Teaching & Learning), Yeon Soo Ha (Student Success and Experience), Laur Sigvaldason (Enrolment Systems and Service Innovation) and Lincoln Tate Ripley (Faculty of Education masters student).
The launch of the DCA Hub is just one initiative in the university's recent pivotal shift in how it engages with access and disability. Student Success and Experience’s Accessibility Enhancement Project has led to improvements in service delivery and the recent rollout of the Accommodate system (replacing ClockWork). The University’s updated Accommodation Policy and Discrimination and Harassment Policy and the respective procedures for staff and students will increase transparency for those seeking and supporting accommodations. CTL’s newly launched Equitable and Accessible Teaching and Learning resource also offers a series of highly sustainable teaching practices that can be quickly added to a course to create immediate impacts on student access and success. These are just a few examples of the projects underway for which DCA offers collaborative and coordinative strategic partnerships and disability-centred leadership.
Collectively, these efforts demonstrate the 海角社区’s commitments to access and accessibility articulated throughout Shape: A Strategic Plan of Impact and related strategic and action plans, especially Igniting Purpose: Student Experience Action Plan, Built for Purpose, Forward Together: The People Strategy and Changing the Story: An Integrated Action Plan for Transforming Our Vibrant and Interconnected University Community. Guided by the principles in Braiding Past, Present, and Future: 海角社区 Indigenous Strategic Plan, DCA prioritizes accessibility initiatives that support greater access for all community members, recognizing that intersections of race, gender, sexual orientation, class, colonialism and diverse forms of ableism not only impact how barriers are experienced, but also offer vital insights into how these barriers can be transformed for the benefit of each and all of us.
In this spirit, the DCA Hub is a database that catalogues accessible resources and services, but it also contains links to disability cultural work across the 海角社区. These include projects (co)led by disabled knowledge holders that showcase the generativity and ingenuity that emerges from communities who are most impacted by these barriers and intersectional structural inequities.
The DCA Hub also tries to spark more transformative approaches to disability by organizing entries by the different kinds of barriers (auditory, learning and processing, mobility and visual) that many people encounter across and beyond diagnosis-based categories. This helps to frame the systemic barriers — not human diversity — as the problem, and therefore the solutions as a collective effort and responsibility.
At its heart, the DCA Hub seeks to connect people to the resources, services, initiatives and ideas that can help transform barriers across the 海角社区, leading to more accessible, supportive, fair, safe and affirming experiences for all students, faculty and staff.
Carrie Smith
Vice-Provost (Access, Community and Belonging)
Danielle Peers
Academic Lead, Disability Cultures and Access