The Disability Affinity Group (DAG) says UBC did not respond to their requests to include Disabled people and experts in Disability Justice in developing the terms of reference for UBC’s Accessibility Committee, according to a statement released by the DAG on February 24.
“The DAG’s efforts to include the perspectives of those with both lived experience of disability and professional expertise in Disability Justice went unanswered and ignored by every member of the UBC Executive and all those with responsibility for the establishment of this committee,” the group wrote in the emailed statement.
UBC is required to create an Accessibility Committee, an accessibility plan and a public feedback mechanism to address issues around accessibility on campus, in accordance with the Accessible BC Act — which was passed in June 2021. The terms of reference are a set of guidelines for how the committee will operate.
The DAG is the only group at UBC Vancouver and UBC Okanagan representing disabled faculty and staff. Dr. Jennifer Gagnon, the DAG’s president and founder, said the group expressed desire to be involved in creating the terms of reference in meetings with members of the UBC executive, in a Zoom interview with The Ubyssey.
“We never heard back from any of them,” said Gagnon, who is also a lecturer in the School of Journalism, Writing, and Media.
Dr. Dana Solomon, vice president of the DAG, said the group received a copy of the terms of reference from a senior administrator who was not developing the terms themselves, but knew who was and was able to get a copy of them. According to Solomon and Gagnon, they received the copy three hours before the terms were sent to the university executive for approval.
“So the Disability Affinity Group executive had three hours to review the terms of reference and provide written feedback that the people creating them had not requested and had been forwarded to us through a different path,” said Gagnon. “And we passed it back to the same person who then passed it onto the people creating the terms of reference."
The DAG raised multiple concerns regarding the terms of reference, including concerns about the committee’s membership application, the lack of transparency regarding who created the Terms and who would be responsible for implementing the committee’s recommendations and that nobody on UBC’s executive team’s mandate included managing disability equity.
The DAG was concerned that the Terms concentrated the majority of control with an unidentified UBC executive instead of Disabled people, who are most impacted by accessibility policies.
Solomon also said the fact that the inclusion criteria listed in the Terms require either lived experience or experience working with or for disabled people “which means that the committee could conceivably end up with no disabled members, if that is what UBC chooses.”
Dr. Arig al Shaibah, UBC’s associate vice president of Equity and Inclusion, said she worked with John Metras, acting VP operations, and Janet Mee, managing director of the Centre for Accessibility, to draft the terms, in an emailed statement.
“[The committee has] been given a very narrowly defined mandate and composition," wrote al Shaibah in the email statement, when asked why the DAG was not contacted to be involved in the creation process.
“We look forward to the opportunity to engage DAG and others in nuancing the terms if needed, but perhaps more importantly to contribute to the advising mandate.”
The legislation al Shaibah refers to is Part 3, Section 9 of the Accessible BC Act.There does not appear to be anything in the legislation suggesting who can or cannot participate in the creation of the committee or its terms of reference.
This article was updated on Monday, April 17 at 2:13 p.m. A previous version incorrectly said the Board of Governors approved the Accessibility Committee's Terms of Reference. The Ubyssey regrets this error.