I can tell you that there has been good progress when it comes to fostering a workplace that is accessible to individuals with disabilities, but we highlighted two areas that need to be worked on.
The first is having better consultation with peoples with disabilities. The principle in the accessibility act of “nothing about us without us” needs to become almost second nature in the day-to-day of all departments and agencies.
The second is improving the process that is there to accommodate individuals so they can fully and equally participate in the workplace. A workplace should be designed as accessible by default. In the absence of that, and in the interim until everyone can get there, duty-to-accommodate processes are how individuals are supported. We saw varying degrees of how those requests were handled, from 24 days to over 300 days. That's a really long time to wait for someone to just be able to participate in the workplace.
The last thing I will tell you is that, while we only audited seven departments and agencies, I expect that every deputy head would be looking at the recommendations and our results here. We are all part of the public service, and everyone can learn from some of these findings and recommendations to improve their workplace.