My apologies. With VPNs and everything between you and me at the police service, we're having all kinds of trouble.
As I said, my name is Robert Fenton. Professionally, I'm the director of legal services for the Calgary Police Service. I am here in my volunteer capacity, though, as chair of the CNIB national board of directors.
We are here today to present several recommendations to you on how to improve air travel for people who are blind, who have low vision and who are deaf-blind. While we do support the needs of other people with disabilities, we don't have the lived experience to speak to those directly, and we will leave it to other groups to speak on behalf of their own needs and their own circumstances.
As you may know, CNIB has been involved in advocating for changes to the transportation system since its inception, really, 106 years or so ago. We talked initially about changes to promote equal access to the rail system. As far as aviation is concerned, CNIB has been actively involved in the accessible standards committee run by the CTA both on accessible transportation and various other initiatives. We have been extensively involved as well in the passage of the air transportation regulations, which I know have been great discussion points throughout the committee's testimony.
CNIB has submitted a brief to you. I'm not going to spend a whole bunch of time going through that brief, because I'm sure you've read the material. Instead I want to focus on the areas that we will be making recommendations to you about in response, probably, to the various questions that we will be answering.
We want to talk to you about barriers to the booking process and check-in. We want to talk to you about barriers to navigating the airport, making payments for various things, such as for checking bags or buying something at airport stores that you may need to use. We want to talk about wayfinding at the airport and the inability of the airports to advertise or demonstrate that they have accessible wayfinding technologies installed. We want to talk about the need to treat passengers with disabilities with dignity during all parts of the journey, respecting the independence that they deserve as they access the airport system and the aircraft.
We also want to talk to you about security barriers that we face as we take new technology onto the plane that security staff aren't familiar with, and the invasive questions that we are required to answer when dealing with security personnel, who are encountering new equipment for the first time.
We want to talk to you about changes to the aircraft itself and accessibility barriers that exist on the aircraft. We also want to talk to you about “meet and assist” policies and processes that the airports have in place, and retrieval of baggage and barriers that occur there when you're a passenger with blindness or low vision.
Finally, we want to talk to you about guide dogs and the barriers that people with guide dogs face, as well as issues pertaining to documentation, proof of documentation, and retention of information by air carriers relating to a person's disability.
We have also reviewed the committee's brief that the AODA has filed, as well as listened to their presentation. We adopt those recommendations in addition to the 20 or so recommendations that we will outline for you in response to the various questions that you will ask us today.
Thank you very much for having us. I am prepared to answer questions when you want to hear from me.
Thank you.