Mohawk College faces criticism for cancelling program geared to help people with disabilities

When a blind disability advocate reached out to Mohawk College to complain they'd cancelled a program that trains students to develop accessible media, he received a response in a format he couldn't fully read.

The irony of the situation was not lost on David Lepofsky, chair of advocacy group Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) Alliance - given the right to have documents that are accessible to all was one of the things he was fighting for.

These kind of things go on regularly in our lives," said the retired lawyer. It's enormously frustrating and it's entirely preventable."

In this case, it's also embarrassing," given the subject of the correspondence, Lepofsky said.

Mohawk College president Ron McKerlie's response - citing low enrolment as a reason for killing the accessible media program (AMP) - was a PDF, and those generally don't work with screen readers, software that turns text and images to speech allowing the visually impaired to use a computer.

The Hamilton community college has been under scrutiny since suspending AMP, the only known program of its sort in Canada, earlier this month. It trains students to develop documents, websites, social media and video accessible to people with disabilities.

This is all we've got and Mohawk just killed it," Lepofsky said.

Mohawk said in a statement on its website the difficult decision" was made after years of low enrolment. Forty-one students have graduated from the program since its launch in 2017, failing to meet targets and sector demand.

The delivery of the program as a graduate certificate has not proven to be viable," the statement reads.

The AMP certificate has been actively marketed over the years," including through professional journals, websites, social media and open houses, Mohawk spokesperson Sean Coffey said in an email Tuesday.

He also said an accessible Word document was prepared and sent" as soon as Lepofsky let them know he couldn't read it.

In the letter viewed by The Spectator, McKerlie reiterated that the program was unsustainable" and not meeting market demand.

Our desire is to remodel the excellent curriculum of the program so that it is appealing to more people," the letter reads.

But Lepofsky isn't convinced the college vigorously" recruited students to the program.

We could be tweeting it ... we reach thousands of people," he said of the AODA Alliance.

Instructor Karen McCall said the certificate program has a strong employment rate" - 91 per cent, according to Mohawk.

Students learn to write in inclusive, plain language and create accessible documents, closed captioning and audio description for video, among other skills. For a final project, they work with a small business or organization to help them become more accessible.

This was disappointing," said McCall, a longtime disability rights advocate. This was a good opportunity for a career path."

The college has faced plenty of backlash - including letters from the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund, which funded a course, and the Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians, as well as a #SaveAMPMohawk hashtag on Twitter - which has left some advocates and disgruntled students holding onto a thread of hope that the decision might be reversed.

However, Coffey confirmed on Tuesday the college has no plans to reverse its decision to suspend the graduate certificate program.

We will continue to train accessible content creation in a number of other formats," he said.

A smaller, more flexible micro-credentials" option - a program that has graduated 50 people in the past 18 months, with a 70 per cent employment rate - will remain available. The province defines micro-credentials as rapid training programs" that teach in-demand skills.

Lepofsky said it's no substitute" for a certificate program.

It's like saying, I need a meal' and they offer you passed-around hors d'oeuvres and you get one or two little bites," he said.

The existing graduate certificate program, which has both full- and part-time options, has no active students studying full time, Coffey said.

The last cohort has completed and graduated," he said.

This is not the first time a Mohawk program decision has hurt the disability community," Lepofsky said.

About a decade ago, the college shuttered its program that trains orientation and mobility instructors, who help the blind and visually impaired get around safely. The outcome, he said, is a reported shortage of instructors, resulting in longer waits for and shorter amounts of service.

Coffey said the program was closed due to declining enrolment at the time."

Lepofsky, who led a decade-long campaign that resulted in 2005 legislation requiring the Ontario government to make the province accessible by 2025, said it feels like a step backward, as efforts - and laws - to improve accessibility in the public and private sector in Ontario are solidified.

Like many Canadian institutions, Mohawk touts its commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion."

Killing this program flies in the face of that," Lepofsky said.

Kate McCullough is an education reporter at The Spectator. kmccullough@thespec.com