Accessibility Think Tanks

The Accessible Canada Act and accessibility legislation across provinces require organizations to consult with disabled people. But community consultation can feel daunting if it’s not in your organization’s experience. Your team may worry they’ll get it wrong, and harm relationships with your disabled interest holders like employees, clients, or community members. They may also know community consultation can take time and budget beyond the internal team’s capacity. Untapped developed the Accessibility Think Tank model to provide our clients with an alternative to public consultation.

An Accessibility Think Tank session is a single community engagement event where a curated list of accessibility experts review your content and then participate in a facilitated focus group discussion. All members of the think tank offer a dual lens as accessibility experts and persons with disabilities.

Untapped brings together a group of 8-12 associates to provide their expertise and feedback on a specific selection of a client’s resources. We’ve hosted Think Tanks that reviewed accessibility plans, reports, multimedia content and policies.

The client can choose to sit in on the meeting if they wish. This is a chance to hear firsthand from accessibility subject matter experts who also have lived experience of disability. Alternatively, clients can choose to watch the recording or review the report Untapped develops. This consultation often includes barrier identification and key data needed for improvements, but can also provide overall project guidance and advice, or technical auditing.

Deliverables from the session include:

• A recording of the Think Tank
• A thematized spreadsheet containing the data analysis from the session
• A comprehensive What We Heard report with themes and recommendations

This model is beneficial in multiple ways—it not only meets the legal requirements for consulting persons with disabilities under the Accessible Canada Act but also aligns with meaningful qualitative methods that produce rigorous, impactful research in academia.

Here’s what to expect:

• We work with you to identify the materials the Think Tank will review, and the key questions we’ll explore in the facilitated session.
• We recruit participants, ensuring a diversity of disability experience, accessibility areas of focus, and other lived experience you are seeking.
• We facilitate the Think Tank, ensuring that participants’ accessibility needs are met. Facilitation is led by team members with lived experience of disability.
• We capture what we heard in the engagement and translate that knowledge into a report with recommendations and thematic analysis.

How is a Think Tank better than conventional community consultation?

A Think Tank has many advantages including:

• It’s faster: Turn-around time from contract signature to receipt of your What We Heard report can be as little as four weeks.
• Qualified participants: Untapped will ensure that Think Tank participants represent the communities and user types you need.
• More relevant feedback: Untapped curates a group of accessibility experts who can identify barriers and offer solutions that are grounded in their industry knowledge and personal experience with accessibility barriers.
• More candid feedback: Think Tank participants aren’t filtering their feedback worrying about repercussions from their supervisor or case manager. They’ll be honest and share value their expert opinion.
• It’s always accessible: Untapped ensures that sessions are accessible to all participants. We coordinate captioning, ASL interpreters, engagement options for nonspeaking participants.