Does Canada have accessibility guidelines similar to those contained in the Americans with Disabilities Act?

Question

I'm a manufacturing engineer and seem to be the go-to person for technical questions in my office. I don't know the first thing about commercial construction or building codes. I am assuming that accessibility rules are contained in the provincial building codes and enforced by those bodies responsible for them.

But I have a colleague who insists Canadians must abide by the ADA (which sounds like nonsense since American laws don't apply here) and that our new offices do not conform.

Can anyone offer some insight?

Answer 1

Canada
Laws in Canada have even stronger provisions against discrimination than laws in the US and apply to every business, organization and individual in Canada. The basis are fourteen governments, each treating disability in a different way.

So human rights laws in Canada attempt to balance individual and collective rights. Traditionally, courts have strongly upheld restrictions to individual rights in order to protect vulnerable groups from harm. For example, there are laws in Canada that restrict public hate speech against identifiable groups. It is helpful to keep this tradition of protecting certain groups in mind when examining how human rights laws in Canada affect accessibility on the Web.

There is the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that is the overarching legislation. No one can make a law that contravenes it. There is also the Canadian Human Rights Act. But, although it protects all Canadians, it only applies to:

Federal departments, agencies and Crown corporations
The post office
Chartered banks
Airlines
Television and radio stations
Inter-provincial communications and telephone companies
Buses and railways that travel between provinces
Other federally-regulated industries.
If a company doesn't fall under one of those categories then one or more of the provincial or territorial human rights acts or 'codes' will apply depending where the company offices are.

Regarding the content all codes have a blanket provision that outlaws discrimination based on disability. All codes have provisions that specifically relate to discrimination in employment and many have provisions that pertain to publicly available facilities and services.

Several standards accompany legislation. E.g. the Canadian Standards Association develops voluntary industry driven standards with focus on Barrier Free Design, Design for Aging and accessible Banking Machines. Further standards are set up by the Standards Council of Canada, the TSACC (Telecommunications Standards Advisory Council of Canada) and the TBITS (Treasury Board Information Technology Standards). In the end Canada was the first country to adopt the WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

In short, your answer is that there is an interleaved layer of requirements including both federal and provincial jurisdictions that is (likely) tougher than the ADA requirements set forth in 1990. How tough and what they are exactly is dependent on the province portion of the ruling - the federal applies to them all.

Answer 2

Absolutely. The restaurant owner should have the right to serve the market he choses. I have the right not to patronize that restaurant. What Rand Paul said was that he would have marched with Martin Luther King against institutional racism. What he also said is that he would not agree with the owners of a business who practiced discrimination. But he sure would not patronize them. Try going to a trendy nightclub and getting in if you don't meet their criteria for dress (or weight). But you don't care about defending fat people, because it doesn't suit your particular agenda. STFU

Answer 3

Yea Canada!