The Canadian Hearing Society / la societe Canadienne de l'ouie
Registration:
3
of
43
(2009-06-11
to
2010-01-04)
Policies or Program
- Kelly Duffin was co-chair of External Advisory Committee to Service Canada and the last External Advisory Committee meeting was on April 29, 2009. Service Canada's draft policy in response to Federal Court of Canada's Canadian Association of the Deaf decision (Augist 2006). The Service Canada's draft policy for the provision of services to deaf, deaf-blind, deafened, and hard of hearing people is currently being tested through two pilots: 1) in person interpreter or intervenor service to clients in designated Service Canada centres in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal (ASL and LSQ), and Halifax-began in December 2008 and is expected to run 12 to 18 months; and 2) researching options for videoconference interpreting in rural locations as well as use of other technologies (such as Ubi Duo)
Policies or Program, Regulation
- On November 28, 2008, Gary Malkowski, Special Advisor, President, Public Affairs, Cheryl Wilson, Director, Provincial Ontario Interpreter Services and JoAnn Bentley, Manager, Communication Devices Program, attended and made a presentation at CRTC Commission in response to CRTC Public Notice 2008-08 on to discuss concerns regarding to lack of meaningful consultations on the use of deferral account funds to improve access to telecommunications services for persons with disabilities including deaf, deafened and hard of hearing individuals as key consumer stakeholders initally and on an ongoing basis throughout the development and delivery of Video Relay Services (VRS);significant delays in the development and implementations of VRS in Canada despite VRS has been operating completitively in USA since 2000; lack of understanding and consultative mitigation planning by the telecommunications industry with respect to the capacity of the interpreting field and its ability to support VRS and the impact of community interpreting services once VRS is realized; lack of a national solution to the provision of VRS in four languages; lack of ASL and LSQ, and captioning content in web casts or video of internet providers; lack of CRTC regulations requiring cable TV and TV broadcasters to be accountable for ensure quality captioning; lacj of compatibility of internet phone (VoIP), cell phone and services such as TTY, 711; lack of employment equity initiatives specifically with regards to persons with disabilities in telecommunication industries and in CRTC's perconnel hiring, retention and promoting employees with disabilities practices from front line to senior management and lack of CRTC Disability Secretariat/Advisory Committee and CRTC complaint mechanism for dealing with related disability and accessibility issues. We made recommendations that it is essential that the CRTC mandate th efull and complete engaement all stakeholders--deaf, deafened and hard of hearing community members (ASL and LSQ), representatives of the interpreting community, existing community interpreting services providers in the development and delivery of VRS in Canada to assure that resource capacity will not be entirely draining from community service needs; CRTC creates a funding framework from which the telecommunications companies and teh VRS vendors can create concrete business development plans in an accountable and transparent way; and it is imperative that CRTC require the use of the deferral account funds that will be utilized for VRS a national solution and that the service be available in 4 languages: ASL and English; and LSQ and French.