Our 2nd annual Impact Report

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Highlights for year 2, as described below, are presented with celebratory yellow circles with connecting purple lines and decorative black star shapes along with the Untapped Accessibility logo. Stats shared are: 8.700 hours worked by professionals with disabilities, 150 organizations supported and $70,000 in profit for Open Door Social Services Society.

Since our launch in October 2022, Untapped Accessibility has become the leading accessibility consulting firm in BC. We’re honoured that public and private sector clients have invited us to help them improve accessibility for their members, employees, and communities.

In two years, we’ve brought our expertise in inclusive employment, accessible service delivery, web accessibility, plain language, accessible community consultation, and Accessible BC Act compliance to over 150 organizations.

This report celebrates the impact of our growing team and the diversity of projects in our second year of business.

Supporting Open Door Social Services Society

As a certified Buy Social Canada social enterprise, we measure our success by our community impact. Each year we report back to Buy Social Canada about our progress. We’re proud to pursue our dual mission to create work opportunities for professionals with disabilities and to generate revenue for our nonprofit parent, Open Door Social Services Society.

2023-2024 marked our first full year of operations, and during that time, we generated over $79,000 in profit for Open Door Social Services Society. These funds will further its mission of fostering well-being for people with disabilities through sustainable and meaningful employment.

Increased team capacity

Our team now includes four full-time staff members. Leading the team is Managing Director Trish Kelly (she/her), who brings expertise in accessible procurement, accessible leadership, and governance. Joining her are two Accessibility Consultants who contribute unique skill sets. Sarah Molder (she/her) specializes in research, accessibility plan writing, and operationalizing accessible employment. Nora Loyst (she/her) focuses on accessible service delivery and accessibility in educational environments. This year, Meg Ingram (they/them/she/her) also joined us in a new Executive Assistant role. In addition to having a brilliant operational brain, Meg has a background in post-secondary education and disability studies.

More BC-based consultants have joined the Untapped team and strengthened our ability to host in-person community engagement and training sessions in BC. Our pool of associates is also more geographically diverse, allowing us to provide a wider range of perspectives from across the country.

Professionals with disabilities leading the work 

We’re proud that our work is driven by professionals with disabilities. According to our Pledge to Measure survey results, 89% of our staff self-identify as having a disability.

One of our goals as a social impact organization is to ensure that professionals with lived experience of accessibility barriers provide their expertise to our clients. To date, professionals with disabilities have contributed over 8,700 hours to our client projects.

We aim for the majority of hours on any project to be completed by professionals with disabilities. In the past 12 months, we’ve beat our target with 62% of labour hours contributed by disabled professionals.

This matters to us, because it means we’re a living example of accessibility principles in action.

Partnerships that make a difference

We’ve been busy! In just two years of business, we’ve supported over 150 organizations to become more accessible.

This year, we helped 25 clients to reach beyond compliance. We’re helping returning clients to operationalize our initial recommendations. And we’re supporting new clients with national and global reach.

Our clients include private sector businesses, school districts, libraries, food banks, and large public sector organizations. Each partnership has been an opportunity to bring accessible design to life.

Take our partnership with Food Banks Canada, for example. This national organization hired Untapped to develop the guide Without Barriers, Stigma, or Fear: A Practical Guide to Accessibility and Equity for Food Banks,including French and English versions. We also designed an accompanying bilingual e-learning course. We worked with designers who have a track record for accessible design. We validated this with user testing, confirming that digital materials were accessible to disabled audiences. These resources are now available to Food Banks Canada member organizations across the country.

Another example is our partnership with the BC Council of Administrators of Inclusive Support In Education (BC CAISE) and Disability Alliance BC. Guided by the “nothing about us without us” principle, we led the development of two important resources for school districts. We developed a tool to help schools evaluate the accessibility of their school sites with physical, sensory, and social-emotional elements. We also wrote a new policy development guide to help school districts adopt more current disability language. We had a lot of fun producing two introductory videos to help BC CAISE get the word out about these new resources.

Evolving with legislation

Untapped Accessibility’s founding was fuelled in part by the Accessible BC Act and the Accessible Canada Act, two significant pieces of legislation that have made accessibility a priority for many Canadian employers.

All public sector organizations in BC needed to have an accessibility plan, an accessibility committee, and a feedback mechanism in place by September 2024. And we’ve matched our services to meet those needs.

Our team assisted the development of accessibility plans for BC Housing, BCIT, BC Lottery Corporation, Small Business BC, Strathcona Regional District, and other organizations.

We also helped to recruit and launch accessibility committees, conduct disability community consultations, and create accessible feedback forms.

Our services and trainings continue to evolve with the changing accessibility landscape. New offerings in our second year include our Plain Language training for teams and our Accessibility Think Tanks. We also developed the Accessible Service Delivery program to support organizations preparing for the coming Accessible Service Delivery Standard.

Delivering for our clients

As a service-based organization, we’ve been delighted to hear positive feedback about our work. Our project satisfaction surveys consistently show that our past clients have been very satisfied with our services and would recommend us to their friends and colleagues.

“Of all the organizations I’ve partnered with on professional development, Untapped Accessibility was the best! Responsive, friendly, and a top-quality production.”

We look forward to building on our positive reputation and expanding our social impact. As our business flourishes, we’ll be able to employ more professionals with disabilities and contribute to a more inclusive society. Our team is eager to share their accessibility expertise, technical skills, and lived experience, so that together, we can build a more accessible future for all!

Reach out to discuss how we can support your vision for inclusion.

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