Past Event! Note: this event has already taken place.
Date: Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Time: 12 – 1 p.m. EDT
Language of delivery: English
Platform: Zoom
Accessibility: ASL interpretation and bilingual captioning will be provided. Additional accommodations available as requested.
About
Ensuring accessibility is crucial, but knowing how to measure and improve it can be challenging. This CAN Connect Forum offers practical strategies for implementing accessibility measures and tracking their effectiveness across different sectors. Discover best practices, tools, and metrics to assess your impact, hear from other organizations, and learn from their challenges and successes. Join us to gain actionable insights and enhance your organization’s accessibility efforts.
Speakers
Moderator
- Cathy Malcolm Edwards: Cathy is a seasoned contributor in research and educational environments. She is passionate about employing strategic and human-centered design approaches to drive action projects, engage in research, and create opportunities for knowledge mobilization. Currently, Cathy leads the implementation of the Coordinated Accessibility Strategy at Carleton University.
Panelists
- Mandi Crespo: Mandi is the National Accessibility Leader at BDO Canada. She is a passionate accessibility advocate, leveraging her lived experience of disability and her expertise in inclusion to drive meaningful change for persons with disabilities. Mandi has been the Project Lead on more than 30 accessibility projects for organizations such as Accessibility Standards Canada, Canadian Tire Corporation, Capital One Canada, Employment and Social Development of Canada, TELUS, and the Trans Mountain Pipeline. She has also been a key contributor in driving accessibility and inclusion forward within BDO Canada, through her work drafting the firm’s inaugural accessibility plan and supporting internal systematic and cultural change.
- Dr. Haley Gienow-McConnell: Haley is an Accessibility Lead at Left Turn Right Turn. She holds a PhD in History and Disability Studies. Her areas of interest and expertise include research, knowledge translation, change management, and accessibility planning. Haley’s professional experience is informed by lived experience. She lives with bipolar disorder. Her husband is a Deaf ASL user and her daughter is on the autism spectrum. Haley is fluent in ASL.
- Amber Knabl: Amber is a CPACC-certified Accessibility Strategist at Fable (a CAN Collaborator). Amber combines her UX and Inclusive Design experience with her understanding of assistive technology to coach colleagues and customers on how to include people with disabilities in product development. Amber is passionate about helping teams move beyond checklists to deliver delightful experiences everyone.
- Matthew Shaw: Born with a degenerative deafblind condition, Matthew is recognized as an expert in accessibility legislation, policy and practice across sectors and industries, with a passion for accessible places and spaces. As Head, Accessibility Practice at the Rick Hansen Foundation, Matthew provides leadership counsel to deliver on the foundation’s mission create and deliver innovative solutions that accelerate a global movement to remove barriers to inclusion for people with disabilities. Matthew writes and speaks about disability and serves on various federal and provincial committees and boards, including Vice Chair of Accessibility Standards Canada, Chair of the Accessibility Standards Advisory Council for the province of Ontario, and Vice Chair of Canadian Blind Hockey, the fastest growing parasport in Canada.