Meet the 2022 MaRS and CIBC Inclusive Design Challenge Winners
Access to Success is thrilled to have partnered with the MaRS Discovery District again this year to support the winners of the MaRS and CIBC Inclusive Design challenge!
“Created by MaRS and CIBC, the Inclusive Design Challenge aims to identify and overcome the most pressing employment barriers faced by persons with disabilities. Run through a series of crowdsourced competitions, the challenge invites members of the disability and innovation communities to propose and develop solutions to these barriers.”
Check out the winners here:
Organization: Magnify Access
Featuring: Co-Founders: Keri Banka, Lyle Williams, Shahveer Ratnagar
What does your organization do? What makes this important?
Magnify Access focuses on increasing access for people with disabilities. Our mandate is to establish accessible digital solutions that support customers’ and clients’ diverse and inclusive service needs.
Our vision is to develop client-centered solutions that:
- Are inclusive in design to create equitable access and improve user autonomy and agency
- Address practices and procedures that discriminate and restrict access for people with disabilities
- Integrate inclusive solutions that consider anti-oppressive principles
Let’s hear your origin story! How did you get into this work?
Magnify Access is led by a team of disability advocates with over 20 years of experience in the accessibility field with expertise in information and communications technology (ICT). Our team brings extensive expertise and knowledge from projects in multiple sectors, [which] have increased accessibility by introducing organization-wide digital solutions including electronic records, documentation transmission, accessible appointment systems, alternative formats, universal design, and inclusive assistive technology.
Our team at Magnify Access represents much of the diversity which exists across Canada. We are people with disabilities and exceptionalities who recognize the detriment of an inaccessible workplace and community. We are racialized persons who have experienced the impacts of discrimination toward people of colour. We are Black individuals who have been challenged by anti-Black racism. We are women who have experienced misogyny and workplace harassment. We are newcomers to Canada who have experienced xenophobia and bigotry. Our team at Magnify Access has a significant cultural identity inventory that propels us to push for more diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.
Who would benefit the most from your work and should check out your organization?
We support organizations to identify the supportive aspect of their current processes and design digitized, automated, and customizable solutions that are accessible from end to end. We create solutions that support employees with disabilities and promote dignity, independence, and equal access to opportunity. Our awareness and lived experience confirm people with disabilities and companies benefit from systems that are:
- Digitally Accessible 24/7: Supports the use of assistive technology with a system that runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
- User Friendly: Intuitively designed and naturally flows screen to screen
- Confidential: Limits user access with security controls, dictating who is allowed access to employee information and system resources
- PHIPA Compliant: Securely stores personal health and identification information
- Queue Based: A ticket tracking system that processes on-demand requests
- Non-Invasive: Minimize social and emotional labour of retelling one’s health experiences
- Committed to Accessibility & Equity: Supporting a broader and inclusive labour market.
Organization: Optical
Featuring: Tyler Hawkins, Founder
What does your organization do? What makes this important?
Optical is a font family and a web tool that enhances our alphabet for varied low vision.
Reading is not a trivial task. We depend on the written word to stay informed, connected, and employed, but we haven’t perfected it. Our alphabet works well. It doesn’t work perfectly for everyone. Research suggests ways to improve letters for low vision. But low vision varies by source and degree. There are no one-size-fits-all solutions in accessibility, so Optical improves legibility control for low vision.
Let’s hear your origin story! How did you get into this work?
I was working as a designer on projects in the accessibility, inclusivity and health design spaces and I saw a need. There were limits to accessibility tools that new technologies could address and a growing amount of research literature around the subject. I made a prototype and found a team of people more intelligent and talented than I to help bring it to life. Optical is the result of a collaboration between the Accessible Technology Program of Innovation, Sciences and Economic Development Canada, Disability Alliance of British Columbia, the Health Design Lab and the Shumka Centre at Emily Carr University, Mirko Velimirovic at Abyss Type Company, Quinn Keaveney and Liiift Studio. Additionally, the project would not exist without feedback from experts in the low vision, research, and technology communities.
Who would benefit the most from your work and should check out your organization?
People with low vision whose primary assistive tool is screen magnification.
Organization: Viability
Featuring: Eliana Bravos, Chair/Co-founder
What does your organization do? What makes this important?
Viability is a neurodiverse team working to co-create brighter futures with neurodivergent people and allies, build community, and transform workplaces, schools, and our broader society in ways that support everyone.
Having operated in the disability space for over 4 years, we have grown to offer a range of services both for neurodivergent people and for organizations. These include:
- Peer-to-peer programming (e.g., mentoring, leadership programming, recreational programming, etc.)
- Educational workshops
- Organizational consulting and process development
- Community events
Currently, we are working on completing a web-app (ND∞Connect) that makes mentorship more widely available between neurodivergent people with shared lived experiences, and lets us scale some of the work we do to make organizations more neuroinclusive.
- Mentorship matters but is a barrier-filled process for many disabled people. Employees with mentors experience better well-being, higher levels of job satisfaction, and promotions 5x more often than employees without mentors.
Let’s hear your origin story! How did you get into this work?
Our team often jokes about how our organization happened “by chance”. We weren’t looking to start a non-profit and were not very knowledgeable about the disability space at the time. I had a mental-health disability that I was receiving accommodations for in school but did not recognize it as neurodiversity (or know that word) and still felt a lot of stigma and shame surrounding my identity as a disabled person.
I was working at another organization facilitating placements for autistic young people and an individual asked me if I knew of any good resources that could help them find a paid job. That’s when I started researching local employment supports and found out that most organizations were doing very similar things, or at least not anything that felt different enough for me to recommend.
That’s when I started wondering whether we could do something new that could better meet the needs of the community. Over the years, as we experimented and worked with our community, we learned that peer-to-peer emotional support was an incredibly important, but often overlooked part of finding a job and succeeding at it.
Thinking about the ways we could scale without losing this piece of our model largely inspired our web-app. We also became more well-versed in the neurodiversity and larger disability rights movements and learned about the harms that dominant personal-reform models can cause — which put the burden on the disabled person to change or mask their identity to be accepted in the world.
Who would benefit the most from your work and should check out your organization?
- Organizations (e.g., corporations, small businesses, non-profits, etc.)
We offer custom workshops and consulting services to organizations of all shapes and sizes. Our consulting focuses on giving actionable, effective, and affordable solutions. For more information and testimonials, see
2. Neurodivergent people and allies
ND∞Connect Web-App: If you’re interested in being a mentor or mentee once the app launches let us know by sending us an email at info@viablecareers.org.
Programs: We offer a range of programs that people can attend to make friends, find community, and get support from peers. For more information, check out:
Volunteer: We are currently looking for people to support app development (coding and design roles), advisors, and other neurodiversity-knowledgeable individuals to join our team. If you’re not sure how your skills would fit in but still want to work with us, reach out anyways — we can probably figure something out!
Attend an event: We host regular events platforming neurodivergent people that you may be interested in.
Organization: Accommodating and Communicating about Episodic Disabilities (ACED) Partnership Team
Featuring: Monique Gignac, Project Director
What does your organization do? What makes this important?
Accommodating and Communicating about Episodic Disabilities (ACED) is a partnership of researchers (largely based at the Institute for Work & Health) and not-for-profit health charities that is developing interactive, evidence-based tools and resources to support the sustained employment of persons living with physical, cognitive, and mental health disabilities.
People living with disabilities are often unsure how to communicate their needs and (like many of their supervisors) are often unaware of the support strategies that can help them work productively over time. ACED created the Job Demands and Accommodation Planning Tool (JDAPT), an easy-to-use online tool that helps people identify the demands of a job that may cause them difficulty and provides personalized strategies to help them overcome the challenges.
Let’s hear your origin story! How did you get into this work?
We are a multi-disciplinary team of researchers and stakeholders who came together in 2016. We bring a wide range of expertise aimed at helping people living with diverse conditions causing disability at work to sustain their employment. Our team members have expertise in health and employment research and backgrounds in social and clinical psychology, epidemiology, medicine, occupational therapy, ergonomics, economics, labour policy, and knowledge translation and exchange (KTE).
All our work includes extensive input from people living with diverse disabilities. Our partners represent people living with many of the most common conditions causing disability in Canada. They are the Arthritis Society, Canadian Mental Health Association, Crohn’s and Colitis Canada, Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada, Realize Canada, Workplace Strategies for Mental Health and Mindful Employer.
Who would benefit the most from your work and should check out your organization?
The groups that would benefit most from our work are individuals living with a physical or mental/cognitive condition that makes employment challenging, as well as individuals in workplaces who provide support to workers. This includes supervisors, human resources professionals, disability managers, union representatives, and labour lawyers. Other groups like health professionals who treat people with chronic disabling conditions would also benefit from our tools.
Stay tuned as the MaRS and CIBC Inclusive Design challenge will continue in 2023! In the meantime, come watch ACED and other accessibility startups pitch at the ATS Labs Demo Day on October 20. Register and find more information here: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/ats-labs-2022-demo-day-tickets-388204117967
