Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you very much. I'd like to first thank the committee for inviting us to come today. I'm Diane Bergeron, and with me is Thomas Simpson. CNIB has been around for almost a hundred years. We were founded in 1918 to serve veterans coming back from World War I who came back war

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, absolutely. To start, just so you know, the document we handed out earlier is actually not the information you need in the next federal election, but our briefing note, which we will provide to you in English and French afterwards. We didn't want to give it to you in advanc

Procedure and House Affairs committee  A screen reader is a synthesizer that reads, in an electronic voice, what's on the screen to a person who is blind or partially sighted. If the website meets the WCAG standards, WCAG 3 or WCAG 2.0—I'm sorry, I don't know all the numbers in there—the website can be accessible with

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I would love to answer your question. The problem is that because the debates are not always accessible, I have no idea what has been missed. I have no idea if a video or an image has been put up in the background or what expressions and body language people are using. I can so

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It has never occurred. I can hear what the person is saying, but if all we needed was to hear what people are saying, why would we need visuals? It is important to remember visuals are there for a reason. I don't know when it has, and I've never had it happen. I've been to seve

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It's not necessarily the only way. I think it's probably the best way, because somebody would be responsible. Either a commissioner or a committee would be in charge of making sure it was in place. If it wasn't the way the committee would go, I would recommend that you look at m

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I agree with the other two speakers about the key points. There's also the fact of making sure not just that the debate is accessible, but also that the marketing or advertising is accessible, because people need to know when the debate is going to be happening, how the debate

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Descriptive video would have told me that very well. Thank you.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, well done. You're hired.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I'm Diane Bergeron, and I'm just going to ask for a second as I set up my adaptive equipment. As a person who's totally blind, I use various technologies to help me in my presentations. I'm here on behalf of the Canadian National Institute for

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you very much. People with sight loss, as I said, are a spectrum. It's very important, with any ballots, to make sure that the print is very clear, that the text is very clean, that it has good colour contrast and that the print is large enough. That will really assist sen

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, absolutely we are facing some of those issues around the templates and with ballots that aren't ready until just before the election. Given that we are working with organizations like CNIB and CCD and other disability groups, I'd think that there's a solution out there. We j

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. We both are.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thanks, Jewelles. I would agree with and echo Jewelles's comments. I find that Elections Canada has a really positive relationship with the committee. Although not every suggestion we put forward is possible, based on the fact that the legislation is there and that a lot of the

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Some things have come up at the committee level. For people with sight loss, of course, it's about having those alternate ways of voting—telephone voting or potentially online voting, if there's a safe way to do that—and having other options that use technology and various types