Season 01 | Episode 05: The Business of Equality
In this episode: David and Sandi discuss the business of equality with Trish Kelly, Managing Director of Untapped Accessibility.
Transcript
David: Welcome to Practical Accessibility Insights, the podcast that investigates practical advice and strategies for making digital and physical environments more accessible to everyone. My name is David Best and with me is my co-host, Sandi Gauder. Hi, Sandi.
Sandi: Hi, David. How are you doing today?
David: I’m good. In this episode, Part 4 of 4, in a series on the human rights principles for business, we are discussing the principle of equality and what does that mean in your go to market value proposition.
So, Sandi, why don’t you go ahead and introduce our guest for today?
Sandi: I would love to actually. So with us today is Trish Kelly and she is the Managing Director of Untapped Accessibility, which is located in British Columbia. Welcome Trish. How are you today?
Trish: I’m doing pretty good. Thanks for having me.
Sandi: So before we get started with our intense questions for you, maybe you can give us your elevator pitch.
Tell us a little bit about yourself, who you are, where you work, and a bit more about what your organization does.
Trish: As you said, my name is Trish Kelly. My pronouns are she, her. I’m logging in today from my home office, which is in Squamish, which is about halfway between Vancouver and Whistler. It’s the unceded and traditional territory of the Squamish nation.
I always make a point of mentioning that and sharing my gratitude to the Squamish nation for their stewardship of this land. And I’m the managing director of Untapped Accessibility, lucky enough to be the person that brought the idea forward to our nonprofit owners to say, Hey, there’s legislation coming in BC for accessibility and it seems like, especially with the requirements for the public sector, that there’s going to be a need to support them in implementing the Accessible BC Act.
Back in 2022, I pitched to Open Door Social Services Society the idea of creating a consulting firm that would focus on bringing people with lived experience of disability and accessibility expertise into an organization where they could be creating the solutions to accessibility barriers for our clients.
So we’ve been at this now for just over two years. We just had our second birthday in October. And in that time, we’ve worked with about 160 organizations, mostly in BC to reach beyond compliance with the accessible BC legislation to create truly inclusive environments.
Really at an enterprise wide level. So I think when the legislation came out here in BC, many organizations thought, Oh, that’s an HR thing. Because when they think of disability, they think of accommodation. And yet in, as you know, with your background in digital accessibility, accessibility needs to touch every aspect of an organization.
And so that’s how we support organizations in complying with and reaching beyond compliance, is looking at how to bring the IT team in, how to bring in facilities, how to ensure that comms understands what it means to communicate in an accessible way, as well as bringing along the employment practices and highlighting the ways that accessibility could be improved for the employee experience and clients and customers of organizations too.
Sandi: As you know, we have the AODA, Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act in Ontario. It’s been around for 20 years, I guess, and it’s been a slow sell here in this province. What’s the reception been like in British Columbia around this, the legislation you have?
Trish: I think that the government in BC did their homework and learned from the AODA experience and from the scars that activists in your community still have with the slow uptake of that legislation.
There are some key differences in the way that the legislation is laid out. I think that there’s less focus on any kind of punitive measures. So they didn’t come right out of the gates with large fines that they were mentioning, that they were looking at it more from an educational perspective and encouraging organizations to take the next steps.
And what was required was really quite simple. To create an accessibility plan with really not a lot of detail about what was required to go into the plan, but you need to have one if you’re in the public sector. You need to have an accessibility committee as well with mostly people with lived experience of disability on the committee, and you need to have a public feedback mechanism, so a web form or some other way for, hopefully other ways as well, for people to submit reports of barriers and to give feedback on the plan.
So it’s really quite simple what is needed at this stage. We don’t have accessibility standards yet, although there are draft standards for employment and service delivery that have been socialized now, and we hope to see them at final ones next year. We’ve worked with 160 organizations in two years, so I think it’s been quite positively received.
We’ve been lucky enough to work with organizations that already had either identified accessibility or equity, diversity, and inclusion as a priority area for their organization from a talent attraction perspective, or because it aligned with the values of the organization.
And so they were warm to the idea. They just didn’t have the expertise or the subject matter expertise to, um, to create those plans or to design those outreach strategies. We’re at that beginning of that wave and we’ve been kind of riding the wave of positive early adopters and haven’t really had to work yet with those that are kind of being dragged along by the compliance deadlines.
David: In a previous podcast we talked about accommodation and integration and we talked about how people view the two terms and the differences. How do you define equality in terms of standards when it comes to accommodating or integrating into a regular mainstream business?
Trish: Well, Untapped Accessibility, we wouldn’t really use the term equality.
I think back to in 2020, there was this meme going around on the internet that showed the difference between equality as a concept and equity as a concept. I don’t know if you would have seen this. There was an illustration of people trying to pick apples on a tree. Some people were short, couldn’t reach the apples.
Other people are very tall, they could get lots of apples. And they talked about equality would be the idea that one intervention or one support that’s the same for everyone is fairness. So everyone gets the same size stepping ladder to access the apples. But then what you see is that for some people who are short or who are using a mobility device, that small stepping stool doesn’t get them access to the apples.
There’s still a big gap. And so equality has its roots in this idea that the same treatment for everyone is fairness. Versus equity, where we would say, we don’t need one stepping stool that everyone gets the same stool. We want to make sure that everybody is getting what they need to access those apples.
So some people might need a very tall ladder. Some people might not need a ladder at all. Some people might need a ramp and that equity looks at ensuring that everyone has the supports that they need in order to access equal access. And to me, that aligns more with the concept of accessibility because accessibility is about ensuring that we have flexibility built into our system.
So we make sure there isn’t just one way to communicate or receive information. We make sure that there are different options for people to receive information. We also build in flexibility in terms of how we look at what someone might need to do their best on the job and also in the accessibility world we would be recognizing that people with disabilities are the ultimate authorities on what they need.
So as opposed to saying everybody needs the same thing and that’s being issued by the organization or the system, we make sure that there’s flexibility to give people what they’ve said they need in order to be successful.
It’s tough though. I know it’s a tough stretch because in our legislation in BC even, even though we have new legislation here, it still says that, like when it defines a barrier, it says a barrier is anything that hinders the full and equal participation in society of a person with an impairment. So that term equal is right in the legislation.
I wish they’d said equitable because I think it builds in this idea that we need to be flexible and offer, you know, options in order to be accessible and support people properly, but it doesn’t. So we have to work with the legislation we have and take the opportunities where we can get them in, you know, this new piece of legislation and some of the opportunities that offers are pretty good.
David: So for a small business owner that wants to hire people with disabilities and they hear a lot about standards they have to meet. How would you tell them to view equality? Do you think maybe when someone says they have to provide equality accommodations that it sort of scares off a lot of small business?
Trish: I think the term accommodations is still very daunting for many small businesses. It has its roots in you know, in it’s legal terminology and there’s legal requirements that go along with the duty to accommodate. And I think that’s can be overwhelming. I think if small businesses think about accommodation and that idea of flexibility, how do you deliver excellent customer service? You deliver excellent customer service by being flexible and responsive to what the customer in front of you says that they need or what they want.
And that’s similar to what you would be, the mindset that you need when you’re thinking about accommodations. If you have an employee that tells you that they need something done slightly differently, or they need to do their job at a, you know, a different time of day or in a different way in order to be able to do their best.
Again, that’s about being flexible and responsive to the person in front of you. So I don’t think it’s as daunting as it, as it can seem, but I also do want to say the duty to accommodate and the legislation, the standards are really powerful tools. We wouldn’t have had 160 clients in the public sector come to us in two years if there wasn’t legislation, because there needs to be enough drivers for an organization that they can make the commitment to spending the time and investing in creating a plan to be more accessible.
And so the legislation and, you know, legal requirements, like the duty to accommodate are, are important drivers that level the playing fields for all businesses and ensure that everyone feels compelled to do the right thing. But yeah, it’s not as daunting as it may seem at first. I wouldn’t want us to step away from those legal protections as well, because even with that, for a long time, there’s been legislation requiring businesses to accommodate up to the line of undue hardship and yet we still have, you know, most human rights cases at the B. C. Human Rights Tribunal are related to discrimination based on disability, right?
So, there’s still a lot of work to do to get there to the place where people with disabilities have equal and full participation and aren’t dealing with human rights violations all the time.
Sandi: It’s extremely complex.
And the thing that is just, I think, hitting me today, finally, more so, is that over the series of podcasts, the series of podcasts has been tied back to the UN Human Rights principles. And in every podcast, we’ve been using the words that are in the principles, but every guest has said, well, I don’t like that word.
I don’t think that’s the right word, like equality versus equity. And I totally understand where you’re coming from. So even when you talk about accommodation and how that can be kind of scary for people, again, it’s those words. Sometimes it’s these words that, that we choose that create the barriers or the scary moments for people.
David: You’re right, Sandi, because a lot of it is culture, right? Words can have different meanings. In, well, not only different countries and languages, but even locally, you know, terminology can, can have some very different meanings.
And I think maybe that is probably part of our problem is we haven’t really educated the business sector on the proper understanding of terminology, you know, such as the word blind. Is it okay to say someone’s blind or not? So these words, these terminologies are important in, in, in, defining.
Trish: Yeah, and language is always evolving, right? When I started working in accessibility, you know, five or six years ago, I remember folks were saying neurodiverse when they were referring to someone who was autistic or had ADHD.
And within the time that I’ve been involved in accessibility, we’ve recognized that neurodiversity is a spectrum that includes everyone. So neurodivergent is the proper term to identify that someone is not neurotypical and that there’s something about their thinking style that needs to be considered and how you support them or how they prefer to be communicated with.
So language is always evolving and part of being an ally to people with disabilities is doing your best to stay on top of how language is changing. And having to hold that truth at the same time that you recognize that legislation only comes around every so often. You’re stuck with what AODA language from 20, you said 25 years ago, right?
Like they’re not going to update that anytime soon. That’s not going to be the priority. And so community’s language is preferences are going to shift much faster than the legislation will and small businesses will you know, build relationships with their employees who are part of the disability community, and they’ll have an opportunity to learn from their employees and from their colleagues around what is the current terminology or what works in their particular you know, part of Canada, even.
Sandi: So, aside from language as a terminology, employers may not know how to deal with or don’t know the essence of because it’s not their field of experience, it’s not their, their area of expertise and they hear all these words. So, once they get past understanding what all these words mean, all these terms mean, are there other barriers people with disabilities encounter?
Are there common barriers that if we could just remove these barriers it would make it a lot easier for people with disabilities to get viable employment that suits their skills?
Trish: The largest root of barriers for better employment numbers for people with disabilities is ableism. And that’s another aspect of what small business owners or anyone working with people with disabilities needs to understand.
So we’ve, you know, in some cases, folks may have been exposed to other types of awareness around, you know, we’ve had lots of more open conversations in Canada about truth and reconciliation and anti-Indigenous racism, or you know, from our proximity to the States, especially hearing about anti-Black racism, we’re starting to understand these systems a bit better.
We need to also consider how discrimination and oppression of people with disabilities has, lives in this system called ableism. And that is, I think one of the most persistent kinds of discrimination and stereotyping that happens still in our culture. And a lot of it is unspoken and unchallenged.
And so we need to dig into, you know, for, for some folks, when they’re hiring someone new, they may feel comfortable saying, I interviewed three people and one person told me they had a disability, so of course I went with a different candidate because I don’t want the extra considerations that are required, or I don’t wanna, I know that they’re not gonna be able to work as hard. Like, they’ll actually say these stereotypes out loud as if it’s okay, in ways that with other discrimination, we now would consider it unacceptable to voice that.
And so I think that is the root of much of what’s happening on like from hiring decisions through to the way that we’ve developed policies and on a federal level and how people with disabilities are disadvantaged by ableism and how it informs policy development or hiring decisions.
Sandi: So when you encounter an employer who has just told you that, that they decided to go with somebody who didn’t have a disability because they thought it would be easier, what do you say to those people?
Trish: Those people don’t come to me and say, Hey, my ableism and how I’ve been discriminating against people with disabilities, and I want to do something about it. It’s more likely that I would hear from, let’s say the, the recruiters working for an organization that say, I keep bringing forward, people with, uh, you know, that have all the skills for the job, that we’ve already vetted and they’re doing, you know, they can do this job well.
And yet, the hiring manager magically chooses someone that hasn’t said that they have a disability every time. Like, how do I address that with that manager. I’m actually working on a session for a client like that, that I’ll be delivering next week, where it is the people that do the recruitment that want to do the right thing, want to have a diverse workforce that reflects the diversity of the customers coming in to receive services and the hiring manager’s biases are getting in the way.
So I think part of it is training to help people understand that what those biases look like and how they impact negatively the performance of the organization.
But also in some cases that it requires a lot of patience for the person that does want the right thing to happen and they really have to be curious and ask more questions and get that person to say it out loud what is informing their hiring choice. And then reflect that back to them and say like, am I hearing you say that you think a person with a disability can’t do this job?
Let me introduce you to someone else in our organization, or another hiring manager that has had success with this, or you know, here are some statistics around that. But it, I think it, there’s a high effort for the person that’s trying to convince someone to step away from that stereotype or bias that they’re bringing into the conversation.
David: A small business owner that is interested in hiring and giving opportunities to someone who has a disability, probably the first question they might have is what support resources are available to them. And as your role with Untapped Accessibility, can you tell us what Untapped Accessibility means and what sort of resources and supports are available?
Trish: Yeah, thanks for asking that. We are trying to be a small business that lives and breathes the spirit of the Accessible BC Act. So we have a team that is, 89 percent of the people on our team identify as having a disability. Every project team that we put together, at least 50 percent of the hours and 50 percent of the people on the team have lived experience as well as accessibility expertise.
So our mission includes creating work opportunities for professionals with disabilities, and that’s part of the value that we bring to our clients. So we’re not in a position where we have one tokenized, you know, we’ll hold one position for a person with a disability. We really are valuing the perspectives and the, and the expertise of people with disabilities in all of the work that we do.
And it’s why we have such a powerful team and why the solutions we’re coming up with for our clients are so strong. What that looks like on a regular basis, again, as, as a manager of a team, I am flexible. I, you know, ask my team, you know, when should we have our daily check in?
We have a like a huddle every day for 20 minutes. What are your priorities? What do you, what do you need to get done today? What barriers are coming up that might get in the way of that? What time of day works best? And for many people with disabilities, doing it at 8:30 in the morning would not be great.
Someone’s medication might not be fully in effect yet. Someone else might have commuting considerations or childcare considerations that mean a bit later is better. So we make those decisions together as a team and it’s within the, you know, like the parameters are, it has to work for the business, but it also has to work for everyone so they can do their best work.
We have a fully remote team. For the people that have been attracted to working with us that is part of what makes them able to do such a great job is that they’re self accommodating at home. And as the employer, I’m like, you, maybe you need a standup desk, or you, maybe you just need me to believe you that when you say you need to clock off early today to take care of your health, that you’re going to either make that up on another day or that your work is going to be so awesome on the other days that we’re still going to be able to move ahead as a business with our goals.
David: Does Untapped Accessibility provide programs for mentoring, coaching, apprenticeships, or even financial aid for technology?
Trish: Our staff team is four people and then we have contractors that work with us. For our staff team, each person that’s come on board that’s in BC has been offered occupational therapist home visit to do an assessment of their workstation to confirm that they have the right tools. So for one person that meant a new mouse and a new keyboard and a standup desk.
We work with Neil Squire Society and actually just pay the cost of that, uh, at home evaluation. And then they recommend the equipment that we would need to buy. And they even have some discounts that they’re able to connect us to with their suppliers. So I just have an accommodations budget in my annual budget.
And I know that anytime staff change or something happens in their life, there’s going to be some kind of cost that goes along with that. And that’s part of the cost of doing business. So it’s just a, it’s a normalized accommodation funding line for, for me and our, in my annual budget.
Sandi: I love that when people say it’s just the cost of doing business. To me, that’s it in a nutshell.
I think people look at it as an inconvenience, an add on, but they don’t understand that it’s just another line item. And if you’re allowing for that line item, then when you’re presented with an opportunity to hire somebody with a disability, it’s no big deal because you’ve already budgeted for it, right?
Trish: Yeah, but I also think about it this way. If I can’t attract great people for our team and I’m short staffed. I have a team of four. If I’m down one person for two months, while I try to get someone that I don’t have the right attraction package. And so I’m suffering with, it takes a longer time to get someone on board.
Those two months, let’s say of me scrambling to try to bring in someone and having to carry that workload without them, the cost on my mental health as a small business leader, when I have to work in a situation where I’m short staffed. It’s not worth it. It’s more efficient and we all work better as a team and the cost is lower if I have the budget to be able to, you know, respond to the best candidates that come in and not decide, you know, who I’m going to hire based on how inexpensive they’ll be at, you know, onboarding.
Sandi: I wonder if it’s different because you’re in British Columbia and the legislation has a different kind of feel to it than what we’ve gone through here in Ontario. You’re known as a more progressive province in general, so I wonder if it’s maybe a little bit easier doing it out there than it is here.
We come up with, I mean, David, I’m sure can tell you stories too, the number of times people say, no, we can’t do it, as opposed to saying, well, how can we do it?
Trish: I think you’re right that in some ways BC has like a little bit more of a clean slate in some ways. Even our built environment is younger than it would be in Ontario.
But we also have been the birthplace, especially in Vancouver, of, you know, some really important social justice movements like 2SLGBTQIA plus rights and abortion rights in Canada had their start in BC. But I think it’s also how we interpret the legislation. Like, we, we talked to organizations and businesses. And we say, like, if you do this legislation, well, at its root, what it means is you are a good communicator.
You develop a practice of listening to people with disabilities and responding to their feedback. So you have a accessibility plan that says what you’re gonna do. You have a committee that you bounce your ideas off of, and you listen to their feedback. You have a public feedback mechanism where you are again inviting feedback from the public and figuring out a system for how you’re going to operationalize what you hear about.
So it’s about listening and responding to feedback in the end. I don’t know if that is true of AODA or if anyone talked about it that way. And we’ll see over time, maybe we are really blue skying this when we talk to organizations and we frame it this way, but it appeals to a lot of people to boil it down to something as simple as being good at communication and caring about being flexible.
David: I think one of the challenges we have is accountability. It seems like Ontario government has not accepted the responsibility of being accountable for enforcement and pulling processes together to help small business. We live in a state of chaos right now.
Sandi: I get what you were saying earlier about legislation is important, we need that to kind of create the structure, the framework, the, almost the, the beacon at the end of the tunnel that we’re trying to get to, but it, if it’s not well crafted or well supported, or it doesn’t give the resources to the people that are, that have to actually act on this legislation, then it can just kind of fall by the wayside, and I think what David said about the province not, it didn’t really support organizations well here, and I think that was the missing piece of the puzzle with getting that implemented properly and effectively.
David: The problem, I think, in Ontario is that they talked a lot about the standards. But there’s really no strategy for implementation, so people are left out and just wondering how to do it.
Trish: And I hear that from our, our clients as well, is that I’ve shared with you that most of our clients are early adopters or folks that already have rationalized how this fits with their values as an organization or their current strategic objectives.
So they don’t need us to continue to focus on the why. Actually, what they need is the how. And so when we design training, when we speak to employers or businesses, we make sure that at least half of the time that we’re spending with them is very practical, how to do this. How do you operationalize accessibility in your organization and bring it down to the frontline staff?
We do need the policy. We do need the leaders of an organization to be saying that this is important and thinking about how to plan for accessibility early and often. But we also need to give tools to frontline staff, so people that are doing client service or customer service, to ensure they feel like they have the tools to contribute to more accessible organizations.
They need to know how to do that.
Sandi: Is there one simple thing our listeners can do today that would help remove barriers and promote societal integration? Something that ideally is not onerous, they could do at their desk, or it doesn’t cost a lot of money, but one little thing.
Trish: Yeah, I can make it simple, but I don’t know if it’s easy. I would say slow down in your decision making because I know as someone that’s leading a small business that there are so many things on my to do list that making quick decisions can feel like that’s my job.
And yet we know that when people make quick decisions, they’re more likely to default to biases that they may not even be aware that that’s what’s in the driver’s seat with those decisions. So my one simple thing would be try to slow down in your decision making, whether that’s a hiring decision or when you’re, you know, coming up with a new product, talk to someone else, talk through your decision process.
Ask yourself some good questions to unpack why your gut might be the right answer, but why you should, you know, be your own devil’s advocate and make sure that you’re slowing down your process. That’s where, how we start to break down those unconscious and unexamined biases and make better decisions. So the very least, what anyone as a small business owner can do is try to slow down your decision making.
And, validate your own gut to make sure that you’re making a decision that is actually going to serve your business and your customers.
David: That’s a very good tip. I think that that is a very wise, practical insight that people can follow. I’d like to thank you Trish for coming on and sharing your experiences with us.
Before we let you go though, for businesses that want to find that, hidden talent out there, how can they reach out to Untapped Accessibility to get some more ideas?
Trish: We work across the organization, so, uh, you’re welcome to reach out to me and ask for referrals, but I would give a plug to the non-profit that owns us, OpenDoorGroup.org is their website, open door group dot o r g. They provide services supporting employers to connect to disabled talent across five provinces, including Ontario and BC and kind of everyone in between.
And they have lots of free services to support employers and small businesses to connect to talent and, and ensure that those accommodations and other supports are in place and that they have access to training as employers to feel prepared to be a good employer to someone with a disability.
Sandi: Well, thank you so much, Trish. It was a pleasure to have you on the show and it was a delight to catch up with you.
Trish: Yeah. Thanks so much. I really appreciate you taking the time with me.
David: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed on this podcast are the speaker’s own and do not necessarily represent those of the podcast team and partners. This podcast is for information and learning purposes only. The Practical Accessibility Insights podcast is hosted by CMS Web Solutions. The intent of this podcast is to raise awareness for practical advice and strategies for making digital and physical environments more accessible to everyone.
Thank you for joining us in this time of discovery and sharing for a more inclusive society. If you have questions or comments, you can email us at info, I N F O at David dot best or Sandi S A N D I @cmswebsolutions.com. For more information and resources, go to www.CMSWebSolutions.com or www.BestAccessibility.Consulting.

Guest Speaker
Trish Kelly
Trish Kelly is a purpose-driven leader who uses a facilitative leadership style alongside an equity lens in her professional work and community life. Her commitment to equity and social justice is grounded in her lived experience as a queer femme, and her childhood experience of poverty and food insecurity.
After spending two decades working for socially responsible companies in the private sector, Trish made the leap into the nonprofit sector in 2015. Previously, she held senior leadership positions in food systems, poverty reduction, and inclusive employment initiatives at organizations like Greater Vancouver Food Bank, Potluck Café Society, and Presidents Group.
Trish is President of the board at V’ni Dansi, a Métis arts organization. She is also a volunteer advisor with the Vancouver Foundation’s systems change granting stream.
Trish lives in the Sea to Sky region on the unceded territory of the Squamish Nation. She is a citizen of the Métis Nation of BC with family ties back to the Prince Albert and Red River communities.