Departmental Plan: 2025 to 2026

On March 25, 2024, I was both honoured and humbled to be appointed Chairperson of Accessibility Standards Canada’s Board of Directors.

Since then, I have witnessed the organization solidly position itself in Canada’s accessibility landscape. Guided by my predecessor, the members of the Board oversaw the development and launch of the organization. They also helped to create an outstanding foundation for our work.

This foundation is now enabling us to confidently enter the next phase of our evolution: providing concrete support for the creation of a barrier-free Canada.

With our strategic plan as a guide and with the Board’s support, our Chief Executive Officer and the entire Accessibility Standards Canada team are already hard at work. As true trailblazers, we are pushing boundaries with our standards and driving accessibility forward through research and the sharing of knowledge and expertise. Our leadership and credibility are now widely recognized both nationally and internationally.

Our technical committees deserve special mention. They are composed of Canadians from across the country who are committed to equity, accessibility and inclusion. They provide their lived experience and expertise so that the standards we create and the results we achieve are authentic and real. They work to deliver results that respond to the expectations of our community. From housing to travel, communications and technology, and the built environment—and in so many other areas of everyday life—we are delivering on standards that break down barriers and increase equity for all.

Make no mistake, there is a lot of work still to be done. To support our efforts, we will continue to consult and work closely with individuals with disabilities, disability communities, and other experts across the country. We draw on their expertise to inform the development of our standards and to advance accessibility for all.

I would like to thank my fellow board members and staff for their contributions, dedication, passion, and willingness to serve Canada by supporting Accessibility Standards Canada’s efforts to carry out its important mandate. This kind of progress is the result of a united team effort and a commitment to excellence by everyone involved. Indeed, it would not be possible without the support of Canadians.

I call on all my fellow citizens from coast to coast to coast to get involved! Help us continue to foster change toward a more accessible and inclusive Canada. You can show your support for these positive changes by providing comments on our standards, joining our technical committees, and participating in our annual public meetings. Your voice is important and can help Canada grow and prosper and be a country where everyone is served equitably.

Core responsibilities and internal services

Our organization has only one core responsibility, Accessibility Standards which is supported by internal services as indicated below.

• Core responsibility: Accessibility standards
• Internal services

Core responsibility: Accessibility standards

Description

The following is taken from our Departmental Results Framework:

Accessibility Standards Canada works to identify, remove, and prevent barriers to accessibility by developing and revising accessibility standards in priority areas defined in section 5 of the Accessible Canada Act.

Quality of life impacts

Our core responsibility is to develop accessibility standards. This work contributes to many aspects of the Government of Canada’s Quality of Life Framework for Canada.

Our mandate focuses on people with disabilities. All of our standards contribute to justice and human rights for people with disabilities. This is because our standards ensure that people with disabilities are treated equally, fairly, and with dignity. They also ensure that people with disabilities have equal access to all of the goods and services enjoyed by all Canadians.

Our standards contribute to many areas of the framework:

• 2 indicators in the prosperity domain:
  • employment
  • financial well-being
• 4 indicators in the health domain:
  • physical activity
  • self-rated mental health
  • functional health status
  • health-adjusted life expectancy
• 5 indicators in the society domain:
  • accessible environments
  • participation in cultural or religious practices, recreation, or sport
  • the sense of belonging to the local community
  • sense of meaning and purpose
  • satisfaction with time use
• 4 indicators in the environment domain:
  • satisfaction with the local environment
  • walkable communities
  • access to public transit
  • natural disasters and emergencies
• 3 indicators in the good governance domain:
  • discrimination and unfair treatment
  • life satisfaction for people with disabilities
  • sense of meaning and purpose

Table 1. How our core responsibility supports the Quality of Life Framework for Canada

The following table shows how the standards we develop contribute to the framework.

Indicators, results and Targets

This section presents details on:

• the department’s indicators
• the actual results from the 3 most recently reported fiscal years
• the targets and target dates approved for the 2025 to 2026 fiscal year

Details are presented by departmental result.

Table 2: Research informs the next generation of standards

Table 2 provides a summary of the target and actual results for each indicator associated with the results under Accessibility standards.

Table 3: Accessibility Standards are developed to address barriers in priority areas as defined in section 5 of the Accessible Canada Act

Table 3 provides a summary of the target and actual results for each indicator associated with the results under Accessibility standards.

Table 4: Stakeholders are engaged in the delivery of our mandate

Table 4 provides a summary of the target and actual results for each indicator associated with the results under Accessibility standards.

Table 5: Best practices on accessibility are publicly available

Table 5 provides a summary of the target and actual results for each indicator associated with the results under Accessibility standards.

Additional information on the detailed results and performance information for Accessibility Standards Canada’s program inventory are available on GC InfoBase.

Plans to achieve results

The following section describes the planned results for Accessibility standards in 2025 to 2026 fiscal year.

Departmental result 1: Research informs the next generation of standards

Results we plan to achieve

Supporting research is a key part of our mandate because research informs our standards. To advance research, we work with other organizations. This collaboration also encourages other organizations to adopt the standards we develop. To achieve this result in the 2025 to 2026 fiscal year, we will do the following:

• Continue to focus our research program on the 7 priority areas identified in the Accessible Canada Act. In addition, the Board will identify and approve additional research priorities. These will target emerging accessibility needs and will be informed by public and stakeholder input.
• Conduct on-site visits of some funded research organizations. This will be done to monitor project progress and ensure deliverables are being met.
• Launch a call for proposals for accessibility-related research projects. This funding will be for projects starting in the 2026 to 2027 fiscal year. We will sign funding agreements with the successful applicants.
• Provide support to the funded organizations to deliver their projects successfully. This support includes:
  • answering common questions
  • providing them with additional information
  • supporting their reporting mechanisms and tools they need to successfully deliver their project
• Review and assess the research reports for projects completed between April 2021 and March 2025.
• Continue making the completed research reports available on demand. This will be done through the information hub on our website called the Centre of Expertise for Standards and Research on Accessibility. It enables us to share accessibility best practices. It also enables the public to:
  • learn about our standards and funded research projects
  • obtain reports for completed funded research projects

Departmental result 2: Accessibility standards are developed to address barriers in priority areas

Results we plan to achieve

We will do the following:

• Publish the following standards:
  • Employment (part 2)
  • Accessible ready housing
• Conduct the following standards for public review:
  • Wayfinding and signage
  • Design and delivery of accessible programs and services—part 1
  • Accessible and equitable artificial intelligence systems
• Continue to support the technical committees as they advance the following 13 standards under development:
  • A model standard for the built environment—accessibility for federally regulated entities as defined in the Accessible Canada Act
  • Employment (part 2)
  • Outdoor spaces
  • Emergency egress (exit)
  • Wayfinding and signage
  • Plain language
  • Accessible procurement process
  • Existing built environment
  • Heritage buildings and sites
  • Accessible ready housing
  • Design and delivery of accessible programs and services—accessible service delivery
  • Accessible and equitable artificial intelligence systems
  • Accessible travel journey
• Recruit members for a new technical committee to develop a standard on accessible tourism.
• Jointly develop Acoustics in the built environment with the International Codes Council (ICC).

Departmental result 3: Stakeholders are engaged in the delivery of our mandate

Results we plan to achieve

During the 2025 to 2026 fiscal year, we will create opportunities for collaboration. This will be done by strengthening our partnerships with the private and public sectors, including all levels of government. It will also include local, national, and international disability organizations.

We will deliver results through the branches listed below.

1. Stakeholder relations

• Hold our annual public meeting in 2025. We will invite the public to learn about our work. We will also invite them to ask questions and learn more about how to get involved.
• Continue to participate in national and international events. Continue to develop relationships with entities across and outside of Canada to foster discussions on accessibility. This will raise our organization’s national and international profile.
• Establish and maintain partnerships with other standards development organizations. This includes both national and international bodies. We will do this to support the development of new standards, the revision of existing ones and the collaboration on research.
• Maintain and grow our stakeholder database and newsletter subscriber list.
• Continue to engage with people with disabilities and other experts. Do this through meetings, conferences, and other public events. We will do this to:
  • inform our work and priorities
  • share information about our work and progress
  • encourage organizations to adopt and use our research, standards, and technical guides
• Continue to expand our engagement of equity-seeking groups, including marginalized groups.

Raise awareness about our published standards and technical guides.

2. Intergovernmental affairs

• Continue to engage and partner with provincial and territorial governments. Work to increase coordination and collaboration on shared priority areas. We will:
  • share drafts standards
  • participate in collaborative forums and briefings
• Hold multilateral collaborative forums and briefings with provinces and territories. We will do this at 3 key phases: pre-development, development, and post development of standards.
• Seek new partnerships to promote the use of our research, standards, and technical guides.
• Continue to engage with Indigenous communities. This includes Indigenous disability organizations and territorial governments.

Departmental result 4: Best practices on accessibility are publicized

Results we plan to achieve

During the 2025 to 2026 fiscal year, we will take the following important steps to expand our network:

• We will continue to share information with the public through our Centre of Expertise and other parts of our website. We will also share information through our news releases and social media accounts.
• We will maintain and update our Centre of Expertise. This information hub enables the public to:
  • obtain reports for completed research projects
  • learn about our standards and technical guides
• We will continue to publish technical guides as a resource to help organizations implement accessibility.

Key risks

• Stakeholder engagement duplication leading to consultation fatigue. Collaboration with parties under the Act, will be key to mitigating this risk. In addition, we will:
  • Coordinate consultation and outreach activities with our key partners, including those that have a mandate under the Accessible Canada Act.
  • Continue to provide stakeholders with timely, high-quality information through our newsletters and accessible and user-friendly digital platforms, limiting unnecessary outreach to stakeholders, reducing fatigue.
• Failure to provide accessible services, products, and information to the public. We will mitigate this risk by doing the following:
  • We will improve our website’s accessibility and information architecture. We will ensure it continues to meet or exceed Web Compliance Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 AA standards. We will do this by conducting regular audits of online materials for accessibility. We will also update the site based on emerging best practices.
  • We will engage with users, particularly those with disabilities. We will do this to gather feedback and address issues with the accessibility of our communications products and tools.
  • We will continue to actively provide content in various formats. This includes providing interpretation in American Sign Language and Langue des signes québécoise for high-value content and calls to action.
  • We will write external communications in plain language. The goal will be to reduce jargon and simplify sentence structure whenever possible. We will also continue to encourage employees to apply basic plain language principles. This will help them improve the readability and aid comprehension of the content they write or revise. To support these efforts, we will offer guidance and share best practices.
  • We will review our corporate templates to ensure they meet accessibility best practices. This will help to enforce accessibility standards and increase consistency. We will share tools and advice to support ease of use. We will offer annual training on the accessibility of documents and provide advice on best practices.

Planned resources to achieve results

Table 6: Planned resources needed to achieve results for Accessibility standards

Table 6 provides a summary of the planned spending (dollars) and full-time equivalents required to achieve results.

Complete financial and human resources information for Accessibility Standards Canada’s program inventory is available on GC InfoBase.

Related government priorities

Program inventory

Our core responsibility, accessibility standards is supported by the following programs:

• standards development
• outreach and knowledge application

Additional information related to the program inventory for accessibility standards is available on the Results page on GC InfoBase.

Summary of changes to reporting framework since last year

Accessibility Standards Canada revised its Departmental Results Framework to accommodate the following changes:

• We redefined and simplified our core responsibility as follows:

  Accessibility Standards Canada works to identify, remove, and prevent barriers to accessibility by developing and revising accessibility standards in priority areas defined in section 5 of the Accessible Canada Act.
  
  The previous version was much longer as indicated below: Accessibility Standards Canada:

  • develops and revises accessibility standards by establishing technical committees and providing support and research to them
  • promotes, supports, and conducts research to inform the development of standards
  • shares information with organizations and the public about standards
  • provides products and services about standards
  • provides best practices used to identify, remove, and prevent accessibility barriers
  • (ensures) technical committees reflect diversity and are made up of people with disabilities, Indigenous people, representatives from industries that would have to follow standards if they were made into regulations, and other experts
• We redefined our program inventory. The 2 programs are:
  • standards development
  • outreach and knowledge application
• We redefined the performance indicator for departmental result 1: research informs the next generation of standards. The new performance indicator is “percentage of completed research project reports used by technical committees to inform standards.” The previous indicator was the percentage of funding invested.
• We introduced a new performance indicator for departmental result 4: best practices on accessibility are publicized. The new indicator is the number of reports and other publications on best practices for accessibility standards made publicly available.

Internal services

Description

Internal services are the services that are provided within a department so that it can meet its corporate obligations and deliver its programs. There are 10 categories of internal services:

• management and oversight services
• communications services
• legal services
• human resources management services
• financial management services
• information management services
• information technology services
• real property management services
• materiel management services
• acquisition management services

Plans to achieve results

This section presents details on how the department plans to achieve results and meet targets for internal services. Accessibility Standards Canada plans to achieve the following results:

• Human resources management is improved. One of our key priorities is to ensure that Accessibility Standards Canada becomes a model of diversity, inclusion, and accessibility. We will use the results of the employee survey and other employee feedback to make improvements across the organization. These improvements are crucial to creating a safe and healthy environment.
• Employee recognition and professional development is improved. We will undertake initiatives that help foster growth and a sense of belonging among employees. As a small organization, it’s important to provide recognition and professional development to all employees as part of their career progression.
• Employees and visitors continue to have a barrier-free experience. Our office space now serves as a model of accessibility within the federal government. We will work to ensure our office space continues to accommodate the needs of people with disabilities.
• The effectiveness of our communications is improved. We will achieve this by doing the following:
  • We will enhance our web presence and website accessibility. We will do this by:
    • implementing the recommendations from a 2024 evaluation of the website user experience
    • reorganizing the content and improving navigation
    • ensuring users have better access to standards and best practices
    • adding a new user login function to meet diverse needs
  • We will continue to extend our social media reach. We will do this by targeting audiences that may not be part of our existing community of followers.
  • We will regularly review and update our website content to ensure it is current, organized, and meets accessibility standards. We will continue to offer downloadable formats.
  • We will support internal teams as they work to develop and implement a new plan to reach more target audiences and stakeholders. We will also refine our communications-related evaluation tools and apply lessons learned.
  • We will increase our participation in federal interdepartmental meetings to:
    • share best practices and lessons learned
    • highlight successes and provide insight
    • build relationships with other government departments
  • We will enhance internal communications. To do this, we will:
    • work to ensure that communication across the organization is clear, consistent, and effective
    • refine tools such as the quarterly employee newsletter and monthly bulletin to meet evolving needs
    • explore ways to encourage:
      • collaboration across all teams
      • the sharing of knowledge, resources, and successes
      • the creation of a more connected and informed workforce

Planned resources to achieve results

Table 7: Planned resources to achieve results for internal services this year

Table 7 provides a summary of the planned spending (dollars) and full-time equivalents required to achieve results.

Complete financial and human resources information for Accessibility Standards Canada’s program inventory is available at GC InfoBase.

Planning for contracts awarded to Indigenous businesses

Government of Canada departments are to meet a target of awarding at least 5% of the total value of contracts to Indigenous businesses each year. This commitment is to be fully implemented by the end of 2024 to 2025.

We have established a plan that uses the tools at our disposal to achieve the 5% requirement. The plan includes doing the following:

• We will use the government’s Indigenous Business Directory to identify businesses that may be able to supply what we need.
• We will continue to offer opportunities through request for proposals posted on the government’s CanadaBuys platform.
• We will invite Indigenous businesses to submit bids when we are purchasing goods or services.
• We will clarify our purchasing needs and target Indigenous businesses that have the capacity to meet our requirements.

Table 8: Percentage of contracts planned and awarded to Indigenous businesses

Table 8 presents the current, actual results with forecasted and planned results for the total percentage of contracts the department awarded to Indigenous businesses.

Organizational profile

Appropriate minister: The Honourable Patty Hajdu, M.P.

Institutional head: Mr. Dino Zuppa, Chief Executive Officer

Chairperson: Mr. Paul Walsh

Ministerial portfolio: Minister of Jobs and Families

Enabling instrument: Accessible Canada Act

Year of incorporation (commencement): 2019

Organizational contact information

Mailing address:
Accessibility Standards Canada
320 St-Joseph Boulevard, Suite 246
Gatineau, QC J8Y 3Y8

Telephone: 1-833-854-7628

Video Relay Service (VRS): 1-833-854-7628

Email: info.accessibility.standards-normes.accessibilite.info@canada.gc.ca

Website: https://accessible.canada.ca

Accessibility Standards Canada’s Departmental Plan does not include information on tax expenditures.

The tax system can be used to achieve public policy objectives through the application of special measures such as low tax rates, exemptions, deductions, deferrals, and credits. The Department of Finance Canada publishes cost estimates and projections for these measures each year in the Report on Federal Tax Expenditures.

This report also provides detailed background information on tax expenditures, including descriptions, objectives, historical information and references to related federal spending programs as well as evaluations and GBA Plus of tax expenditures.