Accessibility Workshop: Learning About Accessibility from Academia to Industry and Everything In-Between

On Tuesday, March 4 from 6:30-8:00pm, join us for a lively workshop. The workshop will include a panel discussion with audience Q&A and an interactive activity on accessibility scenarios. 

Change is incremental and sometimes the smallest change can make the biggest difference for individuals and the community with accessibility needs. This event aims to bring the community together in conversation to identify a few gaps and possible solutions to those gaps to ensure that the communities we learn, teach, work and live in are more accessible. 

The panel discussion will be led by Pat Duong (Air Canada), Michael Carter (Teacher, Activist, Musician), and Alison D’Cruz (Junior Fellow), and will be moderated by Accessibility co-chair Rachel Tyli (Junior Fellow). The interactive exercise will be hosted by Dr. Gillian Parekh (2023/24 Visiting Fellow) who is the Canadian Research Chair in Disability Studies in Education and an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at York University. 

Speaker Bios: 

Pat Duong (they/she) is a co-chair of the Diverse Abilities Employee Resource Group, focused on accessibility & disability at Air Canada. As an ERG chair, they have organized and hosted company-wide events regarding disability & accessibility, and are involved with Air Canada’s Accessibility Advisory Committee. They are a curious, and people-centric problem solver and communicator who applies a continuous improvement mindset to their work. They also get joy from seizing opportunities to facilitate communities both in and outside of the workplace. As their day job, they focus on process improvement and project management at Air Canada. They hold a Bachelor’s of Applied Science (in Chemical Engineering) from the University of Waterloo and consider themself a lifelong learner. 

Michael Carter (he/him) is a teacher, disability activist, and musician. His work is rooted in supporting disabled students in their development of positive disability identities. He teaches Disability Studies at the high school level, leading discussions about disability with disabled and non-disabled students. Before his current role as a learning support teacher in Lethbridge, Alberta, Michael taught instrumental music for seven years in Manitoba and Ontario. 

Alison D’Cruz (she/her)is a Junior Fellow at Massey College and a PhD student in Higher Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto where she specializes in Education Policy and International Comparative Education. Her area of interest and research are related to internationalization of education, international and immigrant student pathways, women and leadership in higher education, and private higher education. She is also an Open Education Fellow at the Open Education Group, where she studies ways to achieve social justice through the use of open education resources. She has been the recipient of many awards for her work on equity and inclusion in education and is a passionate advocate for greater accessibility for students in higher education. She serves as a chair and member of several education related national and international committees, and at Massey, she has been the co-chair of the Accessibility Committee and the Mentoring and Tutorship program.

If you have any questions about this event, please contact Accessibility co-chair Chaitanya Ahuja (Junior Fellow) at chaitanya.ahuja@mail.utoronto.ca.