Project Summary
The research project will evaluate the accessibility of emergency management measures in Canada and of the federal standards that guide preparations for and responses to emergency situations. Our team will ask how persons with disabilities experience, interact with, and respond to emergency moments in ways that differ from persons without disabilities and if current proactive and reactive emergency management measures are sufficiently inclusive of these disability experiences. We will investigate built environments and transportation systems (airports, airplanes, trains, train stations) as sites of emergency management and response.
A person’s cognitive processing affects how they may perceive and respond to environmental information (signs, audio alarms, light alarms), interpersonal communication (announcements, staff guides, emergency personnel), and environmental information (situational awareness, recognizing danger states). Guided by an intersectional group of lived experience experts, our team will focus particularly on barriers to persons with cognitive disabilities as an understudied and under-served group.
Funding
The Accessibility Institute applied for and was awarded $600,000 in funding over three years from Accessibility Standards Canada through the Advancing Accessibility Standards Research Program.
Project Partners
Project Team
- Boris Vukovic, Accessibility Institute Lead
- Sonia Rahimi, Research Lead
Advisory Committee
Contact
For inquiries about this project, please contact Boris Vukovic.