The SSHRC Advisory Committee on Accessibility and Systemic Ableism of which AIM member, Dresda Emma Méndez de la Brena is also a member, has published their report “Analysis of barriers and recommendations developed in consultation with the Advisory Committee on Accessibility and Systemic Ableism (ACASA).” The report is able to be read on the SSHRC website.
The Advisory Committee on Accessibility and Systemic Ableism (henceforth ACASA) presented this report to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (henceforth SSHRC), to provide guidance, and concrete, actionable recommendations for making SSHRC’s policies, services, programs, and processes more accessible. The recommendations made in this report are essential to SSHRC’s inaugural Accessibility Plan and Progress Report, forming the core of the agency’s accessibility work going forward.
ACASA was convened in June 2022, and has held a series of fifteen (15) full committee meetings on Zoom, in addition to separate meetings with ACASA’s Chair and Co-chair, and SSHRC leadership on MS Teams. ACASA comprises thirteen (13) members, representing different cultural perspectives, geographic regions, languages, lived experiences, cultural and ethnicity-related identities, genders and gender identities, and disability identities. Committee members include a master’s student, a postdoctoral fellow, and a sessional lecturer, in addition to tenure-track and tenured professors.
This report is the result of collective work, and includes insights from the community focus groups, as well as ideas shared by members of the other two federal research funding agencies, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). We would be remiss not to also recognize the feedback we received from many volunteers and community experts, including those working in disability justice.
ACASA’s report is grounded in Critical Disability Studies as well as Mad Studies [English only link] and draws on intersectional modes of analysis to explore how SSHRC can participate in dismantling the culture of ableism by identifying and changing discriminatory practices against students and researchers with disabilities within higher education and across Canada.
ACASA’s work contributes to dismantling ableism in research by identifying and replacing ableist words used in SSHRC’s current funding programs and evaluation criteria, and by analyzing how existing federal legislation, more broadly, perpetuates discrimination and harm at the intersections of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability, and class. The Lead Author and Co-Author of this report, in consultation with ACASA (for which they are also Chair and Co-Chair), elected to use person-first language (“people with disabilities”) rather than disability-first language (“disabled people”) in their work. However, the Committee recognizes and honours the individual preferences of all people with disabilities, whose identities and language choices are shaped by complex histories and by lived experience.
In addition to drawing upon the pillars of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA) based on the Tri-Agency Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan, ACASA also provided extensive guidance around equitable assessment and evaluation practices.
Access recommendations also address web content, communication methods, and application processes. ACASA’s recommendations target eligibility criteria, application tools and platforms, as well as improved transparency and accountability for access supports. In the application evaluation section, the recommendations focus on evaluation criteria, special circumstances, and confidentiality. For application reviews, recommendations address accessible communications, documents, and committee workload. Lastly, ACASA provides recommendations for reducing the direct costs of research for people with disabilities, and for eliminating the bureaucratic hurdles of separate applications to support accessibility needs in research.