AODA Alliance
ACCESSIBILITY FOR ONTARIANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT ALLIANCE
NEWS RELEASE – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Disability Advocates Press Mohawk College to Reverse Wrong-Headed Cancellation of its Much-Needed Accessible Media Production Program and Urges the Ford Government to Intervene
June 10, 2022 Toronto: The last thing Ontario needs is for yet another backwards step on the obstacle-strewn road to making Ontario accessible to 2.6 million Ontarians with disabilities. Yet that is what has just harmfully been done by Mohawk College, a community college that is fully funded and overseen by the Ontario Government.
For several years, Mohawk College has offered an excellent Accessible Media Production graduate certificate program. It gives desperately needed training on how to produce disability-accessible websites, electronic documents, videos and the like. Digital accessibility is a vital part of the goal of Ontario becoming disability accessible by 2025, as is required by Ontario’s Disabilities Act.
Mohawk College has just canceled this much-needed program. It should instead proudly keep offering it and should ramp up efforts to recruit students to take it. Ontario desperately needs many more skilled people who can help public and private sector organizations tear down the many barriers to digital accessibility that still persist over 17 years after the Legislature unanimously passed the landmark Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act.
The AODA Alliance today wrote Mohawk’s president. (See the letter, below) We call on Mohawk to reverse this harmful decision. We ask for an urgent meeting with Mohawk’s president. If Mohawk does not swiftly fix this mess, we call on the Ford Government to intervene to get this decision reversed.
“Mohawk says it cancelled this important program due to low enrollment, so why hasn’t it instead effectively ramped up its advertising for this program?” said David Lepofsky, chair of the non-partisan AODA Alliance which advocates for accessibility for 2.6 million Ontarians with disabilities. “Mohawk gave short shrift to its own equity commitments by replacing this ground-breaking program with the inferior thin gruel of some micro-credential workshops that can’t equip students with the full suite of needed skills that this fulsome program now delivers.”
Contact: AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky, aodafeedback@gmail.com Twitter: @aodaalliance
Text of the June 10, 2022 Letter from the AODA Alliance to the President of Mohawk College, Copied to Ontario’s Minister and Deputy Minister of Colleges and Universities
Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance
United for a Barrier-Free Society for All People with Disabilities
Web: www.aodaalliance.org Email: aodafeedback@gmail.com Twitter: @aodaalliance
Facebook: www.facebook.com/aodaalliance/
June 9, 2022
To: Ron J. McKerlie, President Mohawk College
Via Email president@mohawkcollege.ca
135 Fennell Ave W
Hamilton, ON
L9C 7V7
Twitter: @ronmckerlie
CC: Jill Dunlop, Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities
Email: jill.dunlop@ontario.ca
Shelley Tapp Deputy Minister Training, Colleges and Universities
Email: shelley.tapp@ontario.ca
Dear Sir,
Re: Mohawk College’s Cancellation of Its Accessible Media Production Graduate Certificate Program.
We strongly urge Mohawk College to immediately reverse its recent decision to cancel its Accessible Media Production graduate certificate program (AMP). We request your personal intervention now to rectify this harmful decision. We ask for an urgent virtual meeting with you.
As you will recall from dealing with us during your days as a deputy minister in the Ontario Public Service, the AODA Alliance is a widely respected non-partisan grassroots disability coalition. We advocate to make Ontario accessible to over 2.6 million Ontarians with disabilities by 2025. That mandatory deadline is set by the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act.
Ontario is now far behind schedule for becoming accessible to Ontarians with disabilities by 2025. The ground-breaking January 2019 report of the Government-appointed Independent Review Of the AODA’s implementation, conducted by former Lieutenant Governor David Onley (who is also a member of the advisory committee for Mohawk College’s AMP program), concluded that progress on accessibility in Ontario has proceeded for years at a “glacial” pace. The Onley report found that Ontario remains a province full of “soul-crushing” barriers.
The cancellation of Mohawk College’s AMP program makes this situation worse. Ontario cannot afford any actions that further delay progress towards Ontario becoming accessible.
This Accessible Media Production program is described on the Mohawk website as the first graduate program in Ontario to focus on accessible media production. It is an intensive, immersive, 8-month program containing 11 courses.
Mohawk’s website announces that this program will enable students to “(g)ain a competitive advantage in producing accessible content.” It announces that students in this program will:
Receive intensive training in producing accessible content, including:
Closed and open captioning
Described and integrated described video
Accessible documents taking into consideration inclusive writing and communication
Accessible social media and websites.
Learn to create accessible content using the latest technology and access to top industry professionals.
Examine disability legislation in Ontario (AODA), Canada, USA, and around the world, and how it pertains to accessible content.
Investigate the experiences of people with disabilities and the advancements of accessibility to usability.
In this program, students learn from experienced accessible media practitioners. They produce a capstone project where they work with an industry partner to help that partner enhance the accessibility of its business. Each student’s project incorporates all skills from the 8 courses into one project.
To become accessible, public and private sector organizations must, among other things, ensure that their websites, electronic documents and public-facing medias meet the accessibility needs of people with disabilities, such as those who have vision loss, dyslexia and other print-related disabilities. Ontario is far behind in reaching the important goal of digital accessibility, even though the Information and Communication Accessibility Standard was enacted under the AODA over 11 years ago. As but one example, when I went to the Ontario Government’s InfoGo website to look up the names and email addresses for the Minister and Deputy Minister of Colleges and Universities so that I could copy them on this letter, I was shocked but sadly not surprised to find that this public Ontario Government search interface has obvious, immediately-detectible accessibility barriers for a blind person like me using well-known popular screen-reading software.
Ontario desperately needs an ample supply of people trained in creating accessible documents, websites, and other media. The AMP program is aimed at this very goal. These skilled workers can help meet the needs of public and private sector organizations. They could also effectively provide services to organizations around the world that are working towards achieving digital accessibility.
Digital accessibility is a growing legal requirement around the world, as more countries adopt accessibility legislation. To that end, Mohawk’s AMP program helps serve two additional Ontario Government goals, the expansion of Ontario’s skilled workforce and positioning Ontario to expand its international trade in services as well as goods. As a former deputy minister in the Ontario Government, you know the importance of these goals and the need for Mohawk to play its part in helping advance them.
To cancel this program is palpably counterproductive for Mohawk College and Ontario as a whole. In response to criticism of this decision, Mohawk College has announced that it will offer some units to obtain micro-credentials in this area. This thin gruel will not replace the superior program that Mohawk has cancelled. The goal of the micro-credentials, according to the Ontario.ca website is to:
“Take less time to complete than degrees or diplomas.” Ontario Tech University describes micro-credentials as:
“…different from more traditional learning experiences. A micro-credential may recognize learning obtained from a particular experience (such as a workshop)/”
The decision to eliminate Mohawk’s AMP program flies in the face of Mohawk’s stated strong commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion. It most certainly contradicts your statement in the introduction to Mohawk College’s equity, diversity and inclusion action plan:
“Strengthening our leadership in Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) is a key priority for Mohawk College and is integral to our core values… and that as educators we have a responsibility to act and show leadership in advancing the principles of equity, diversity and inclusion in our community.”
This is made worse by the fact that Mohawk College does not appear to have consulted with its Coordinator of the AMP program or the Program Advisory Committee, of which former Lieutenant Governor David Onley is a member, before reaching this unwise and harmful decision. Since it became public, there have been strong calls from the community on social media for this harmful decision to be reversed. In response, Jennifer Jahnke, Coordinator of the Accessible Media Production program, posted the following on Twitter on June 7, 2022:
“I am @MohawkCollege’s accessibility specialist – I was not consulted about this decision”
“As the Coordinator of the Accessible Media Production program, I’m overwhelmed by the support. The decision from @MohawkCollege to suspend the AMP program took me by surprise. I am hoping they will re-consider. Your support & advocacy is a huge help! #SaveAMPMohawk”
To cancel this program is to squander the public resources that have already been invested in it. Mohawk has the accrued advantage of the experienced practitioners who developed courses, and who accumulated hands-on experience teaching and refining the program. It is wrong and wasteful to let that synergy diminish or dissipate.
If the concern at Mohawk has been low enrollment, it would be far wiser for Mohawk College to immediately reverse this decision and ramp up its efforts to advertise/publicize the program. We anticipate that many who might be interested in taking it, from here or abroad, don’t even know about it. If asked, we would be happy to publicize this program through our ever-expanding networks and social media reach.
As you know, Mohawk College, as an Ontario community college, is funded and overseen by the Ontario Government. We are copying this letter to the Minister and Deputy Minister of Colleges and Universities. We urge them to intervene to get this decision reversed if Mohawk College does not correct this situation, since this decision undermines important provincial policy goals. Certainly, the Ontario Government itself would benefit from having employees take this program, as the InfoGo website demonstrates.
May we have an urgent virtual meeting with you to discuss this situation as soon as possible? Can you please let us know what all the reasons are for this cancellation, why Mohawk contradicted its own equity commitments, what has been done to advertise/promote this program, and why the AMP program’s Coordinator and the Program Advisory Committee were not consulted before this decision was reached?
We look forward to hearing back from you and are eager to do whatever we can to assist.
Sincerely,
David Lepofsky CM, O. Ont
Chair Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance
Twitter: @davidlepofsky