LCO More Adventurous With Technology!

We recently tried something new with our consultation process and we’ll likely do it again. Lauren Bates, head of our project on developing a coherent approach to the law as it affects persons with disabilities, participated in a web based consultation with the assistance of Citizens with Disabilities – Ontario. Citizens with Disabilities provides on-line conference rooms that can accommodate various size groups for meetings, courses and interviews, among other uses, through their on-line Conference Centre. Apart from the convenience of format, there is the obvious advantage of accessibility.
At our end, Lauren was joined by Professor Roxanne Mykitiuk, Osgoode Hall Law School LCO Scholar in Residence for January to June 2009, who is preparing a significant discussion document in this project, and Stephanie Ligori, one of our summer students, who is a law student at the University of Ottawa Common Law. They were obtaining the views of several people to our recently released threshold consultation paper, “Approaches to Defining Disability”. (The paper is available in pdf and html, by the way.) Through the conference room, they engaged with people from Thunder Bay, Ottawa, Burk’s Falls and elsewhere in Toronto, for example.

Most importantly, participants could talk, using a mike and speakers, or could type their comments. It’s possible to upload documents, that can be converted into formats accessible to assistive technology users, during the meeting or educational session and subsequently obtain a transcript. As Lauren describes it, the conference room is “an equalizing format”.

I’m not doing justice to the functions available through this technology, nor all the trouble-shooting help it provides. We are probably a bit slow in coming to this service, but I’d like to hear from anyone who has used it and has suggestions for how to use it most effectively.