Strategies

=AODA Training Strategies= Resources l AODA Training Resources l Conferences l Strategies

University Counsel / Secretary has ultimate responsibility. The implementation of the AODA standards is being overseen by the Office of the Vice-President and Provost, through the Division of Human Resources and Equity led by the Vice-President, HR & Equity.
 * 1.** **Who has taken the overall responsibility for implementing the AODA legislation at your school?**

At McMaster, an Accessibility Council has been assembled to implement the legislation. It is comprised of senior representatives of various campus units, including Senior Management, Human Rights & Equity Services, Human Resources, the Centre for Student Development, Facility Services, etc. While we (at the Centre for Leadership in Learning) are in contact with members of this group and are discussing ways in which we can support instructors throughout the implementation process, responsibility ultimately rests with this Council.

Vice-President- Human Resources and Equity in conjunction with the Employment Equity Officer, AODA Advisor  Our university had HR coordinate it but (Director, Teaching and Learning) sat on the working group that developed the materials that were used in the training of faculty and TAs.

An AODA coordinating position has been advertized. We do have a central AODA coordinator: Employment Equity AODA Officer
 * 2.** **Do you have an AODA coordinator or central person in charge of the process?**

At McMaster, an Accessibility Council has been assembled to implement the legislation. The group is in charge of the process, and its members share responsibility for moving training forward.

Director of HR for staff. Looks as though CST will be given main responsibility for doing faculty/TA training. Building collaborative approach with other units/groups with educational/equity mandates. Responsibility for providing AODA training resides with the employer—in this case, individual offices, units and divisions. I recently trained the TAs who work for me by having them complete the online training modules developed by the COU. HR & Equity provides the key information and a framework for the training (the COU modules being one option, supplemented by a printed brochure that all employees must read), and discourages units from designing their own training from scratch. They try to work with individual units and often invite the unit/office/program to contribute a departmental or divisional focus to the training. Maintaining consistency through how the training is delivered and to whom has proven challenging.
 * 3.** **Who has the responsibility for the training your stakeholders?**

At McMaster, an Accessibility Council

Training has yet to be completed. Faculty members are invited to “information sharing” sessions, not training. I don’t have a real sense of how faculty members have responded as our office is not directly involved with this. I know anecdotally that is has been difficult to relate these standards to what faculty members do in their own classrooms.
 * 4.** **How have your faculty members responded to the training?**

Very well.

First actions have centred on training for Service provider - ensuring records for compliance. The number one concern I hear voiced through the grapevine is the perceived threat to academic freedom. Faculty members do not want to be told what to put in their syllabi or how to structure their assignments. They want to be able to use whatever course materials they deem most relevant. They already feel pressured to provide the latest research and use the latest technology—adding accessible course materials on top of that seems overwhelming.
 * 5.** **What issues have you encountered and how have you dealt with them?**

Given that the Centre for Leadership in Learning is a few steps removed from the process, I'm not entirely sure how faculty members have responded to the initial Customer Service Training. We haven't heard of any major resistance. We have heard some concerns from instructors about the ways in which the upcoming Information & Communications standards will affect their teaching. We're currently in contact with members of the Accessibility Council in order to plan programming that might deal with some of these issues.

Issues that have arisen have been turned into FAQs that can be found on the University of Toronto's AODA web site: aoda.utoronto.ca

The next big challenge is the new health and safety legislation on mental illness, domestic violence and harassment in the workplace which we are being drawn in to working on with HR again.