Accessibility Ally

00:00
Welcome to Accessibility Ally. It's a podcast featuring guests with a range of disabilities and social identities. They share provocative ideas and challenge allies to disrupt ableism. And I'm your host, Karima Lonson. Thanks for tuning in. Welcome to this episode and season two of Accessibility Ally. I'm really thrilled today to be meeting with

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Tammy Bernaske and Tova Sherman. And they will introduce themselves and we'll dive into a great conversation about the state of accessibility in Nova Scotia in the fall of 2025. So Tammy, can I invite you to introduce yourself, tell our listeners who you are and where you're joining us from today? Sure. Thank you so much for the invitation. My name is Tammy Bernaske um and I'm joining you from Cape Breton Island.

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I work at Cape Breton University as uh an assistant professor in political science, but my background is in disability studies and I do a lot of work around access and inclusion. have lifelong experience of disability as well. Yeah. Great. so much. Thanks so much, Tammy. And Tova, what about you? Hi, Tova Sherman here.

01:19
Right alongside our host, of course, which is very fun too. Hi, Tammy. Great to see you. And I'm the CEO of Reachability Association right here in Nova Scotia. And I'm also a public speaker and I travel all over North America, reminding everybody the importance of disability awareness, disability inclusion, and disability confidence. Great. Thanks so much, Tova. So Tammy, let's start with you. I know that you're involved in the...

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Quality of Life Index. Can you tell us what that is? Sure. The Accessibility Directorate gave funding to the Nova Scotia League for Equal Opportunities to develop a Quality of Life Index for people with disabilities in Nova Scotia. And it's designed to measure progress against the Accessibility Act, but it does a little bit more than that as well. And so they reached out to me to ask if I would like to be involved in the project. And so I supported them in developing the index. I reviewed Engage Nova Scotia's work.

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as well as other documents related to the Act and the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. And we came up with an index uh that, like I said, is designed to measure progress against the Act, but also looking at inclusion and access and quality of life for people with disabilities across Nova Scotia. uh In terms of its content, it's quite extensive. It does have 13 different domains. Six of those domains are outlined in the Act, but then there's seven additional domains as well.

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And so I was really excited to be a part of this project because it's really looking at quality of life in all areas of life for people with disabilities. And for me, when we think about quality of life, when we think about access and inclusion, access goes beyond just, you know, getting into spaces, but actually being meaningfully included in society and spaces and in activities and daily life. And so I was really excited to be part of this project. can you give us a few examples of what is included in those domains?

03:11
Sure, yeah. I have the domains listed here. I'll just refer to my document because it is quite extensive. So it does cover the areas that are in the Act around education, employment, the built environment, goods and services, information and communication, and transportation as well. But there's seven other domains that I think are really important around community vitality. This is very much in line with the work that Engage Nova Scotia is doing as well.

03:37
Democratic engagement was another area as well as justice, leisure and culture. thought recreation is really important. Healthy populations, given the state of healthcare, it's really important to think about those issues as well. The natural environment and very, very importantly, economic security. um It's the prime social indicator in terms of social determinants of health. So looking at economic security and

04:04
the ability to save for the future and that sort of thing. So lots of different areas are covered m and certainly a lot of different ranges of ideas and m certainly recognizing the vast array of experiences that people with disabilities have as well. And so do you have any results yet from the quality of life index? That's a really good question. So the second part of the project is to develop a baseline sort of to measure progress, right? We have to start somewhere. We're still in the finalizing

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phases of that. working with Engage Nova Scotia with the accessibility directorate and we are trying to access some of the data from the Canadian survey on disability. uh It's a long process so we are working on it and we're hoping that we'll have at least a baseline coming out in the next couple of months. I maybe remember that Engage did, had some questions in their last survey that focused on people with disabilities and some of the results were things like

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high levels of isolation, um lower levels of course of economic security. uh Can you remind the listeners and me of some of those results? Sure, yeah. So they did capture information related to many of the domains that are in the Quality of Life Index that we developed. uh Their definition of disability was a little bit more narrow uh in the last round.

05:30
But we've worked together and the definition that's coming out in the next survey for them is quite broad in terms of looking at the experiences of disability. So I don't have any of the data yet from that compilation from the baseline. I think though, it's safe to say that statistically for all people with disabilities across the country and certainly global indicators are that isolation, access and inclusion is always a challenge for people with disabilities. And if we

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m One of the other things we want to be able to do is look at intersectionality. So it's not just about disability, but also ranges of disability and then other aspects of identity that might impact a person's experience. So it's really quite complicated. I don't have any statistics yet, um but stay tuned because we're hoping to have a little bit of data available in the next uh month or two. Great. I know that doesn't really answer your question, broadly speaking, think. you. um

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Jova, know that we've talked about sort of economic insecurity from your perspective and in the work that you do at ReachAbility. Can you share a little bit more about that and kind of what are some of the trends, what are some of the things you're seeing? Well, I have to say as someone who's kind of on the ground from a different perspective, that's why it's so fun to be here with you, Tammy, because I'm hearing all that and my brain's running, but I'm also hearing those...

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those voices coming in my door and what are they saying? We work with about, we're about many services to the few versus few services to the many. So we work with about 350 clients a year. The majority, if not all, are living with some form of disability. We've done some studies internally and determined that 93 % of our clients live with some form of trauma directly related to the treatment and response to the fact that they live with disability. Or as you commented, you mentioned intersectionality. That's a big one for us.

07:25
Right now we're seeing approximately 40 % of our clients are newcomers with disability. So we've been thinking a lot about the intersectionality and we've been developing a lot of our internal work around seeing who these clients are, seeing that intersectionality and kind of addressing it. So in our case, what I'm hearing and what I'm seeing around the social is it's never really gotten better since COVID. That's been one of the realities. I think people like to put COVID in the past.

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But in fact, I don't believe that our population, I can't speak to all, I can only speak to this population I work in, but I can tell you it is not over. It is only continuing to create more anxiety, more stress, more isolation, because although it is over on some levels, we saw where we were, we saw the isolation, people weren't able to leave their homes. And so other people we thought maybe would get a little more, I don't know, I don't like the term sensitive, because I'm not saying they're insensitive, but aware, a little more aware.

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of some of those isolation issues. But I found once the doors opened up again, you know, we were continuing to be left in behind, but there wasn't necessarily that awareness of, oh, that's what it's like. So what I'm seeing is a group of people who want to be treated just like everyone else, but that lack of disability confidence, that lack of capacity to say, hey, how much hearing have you got? Which no one will ever say, maybe me, but I ask people, you know, you say you have a hearing impairment, how much hearing have you got?

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but people immediately respond, oh my God, you can't say that. We as a community have let down um all of us in terms of the community being welcoming to this intersectional group, being welcoming to persons with disabilities who also happen to be from other marginalized communities and talking about that more. And the result has been that we don't feel the progress that we're hearing. So we hear about all these studies, you know, from a perspective, we hear about all these great things going on, but what we don't really see

09:17
it in that grassroots action or how it affects you would think it would more maybe than it does. And I need to say that just because it's tough. I'm presently working on the central region. I'm the chair of the central region around the remedy, discussing the remedy and how that's going to look. I know, Tammy, you know all about that as as as of course to you, Connie. But basically what I want to say about it is we're very confused at that grassroots level. We want to do more. We want to contribute. We want to share the information. But again,

09:46
that mechanism doesn't seem to be in place in the way that one might expect at this stage. So I totally hear what you're saying, Tammy. And I also want to say that from the perspective of the community, it is a frustration that we don't always get action from these reports or even a clarity of what these reports are going to do for the community as a whole. Yeah. And I think the really interesting piece here is that, Tammy, the Quality of Life Index is going to be province-wide.

10:14
Tova, as you say, you have sort of a depth of understanding and of the 350 a year. So, you know, in your role as CEO, probably thousands in your tenure. And hopefully this quality of life index will bring to light some of the lived realities of people with disabilities across the province. I think that's the piece that's so important for employers to hear.

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um to certainly understand the lived realities of, again, people with a range of disabilities across Nova Scotia, because I think the awareness piece is really not there yet. But what you said is really, really important, and I just want to share because I think that it's so important that we understand this isn't just an employer problem. Persons with disabilities, we're also stigmatized. People in the community are stigmatized. You know, we all heard about disability as being a dirty word.

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I'm not trying to change the word. I want to just change the power of the word. And the word is really saying we are, really believe frankly, we all had, have, or will have a disability. So to me, it's all rather bizarre. But ultimately what I want to say is that employers need to continue the work of inclusion and not let some bogus DEI backlash crap get in the way of what we all know is correct and right and proven over and over and over again through studies.

11:39
that the inclusion of persons with disabilities in the workplace. So we need to keep pushing the employers towards disability confidence and the clients towards self-awareness, self-confidence, and ultimately the capacity to believe that your community is on your side. And Tammy, this is a great point in terms of, there's data, there's data sets, so we're going to have this increase in data, this wide-ranging information. And then what happens with that?

12:06
results of the quality of life index? Is that something that you're, um you know, with Engage, with the directorate, like are you talking about when we get this baseline, now how are we sharing that out to, um you know, employers, workplaces, people across Nova Scotia? Sure. I'll address that question and then I'm going to come back to one of Tova's points if that's okay.

12:29
um Yeah, you know, when I agreed and was very honored to be a part of this project, my goal is to be able to have information for people, right? I think it's really important in terms of changing perceptions of disability, um that people are aware of the barriers that people face. We really, I really do want to know what the quality of life is for people with disabilities across Nova Scotia. And so when I joined this project, I envisioned m that we will

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have the baseline report come out in the next couple of months. We fully plan to share that widely. And my hope is that going forward, it will be used to measure progress over time, right? So we need to start somewhere. It's really hard to get access to data. I'll be honest, the Canadian survey on disability is very detailed. There's over 140 questions. They're broken down into categories. Each response is an individual question sometimes. So it's just really hard to get access to.

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the wide range of data that I want to do the baseline. But we're doing the best we can to get at least some information out there in terms of a baseline. I'm hoping that the survey data will be freely available to the public in the future in easier ways to access because it is a problem in terms of governments collect data, but we want to be able to ensure that that data then goes back out into the community because it's really important.

13:53
breaking it down by province, by gender, whatever the case might be, right? There's lots of different things to consider there. So my hope for this project is that we have the baseline that will come out in a couple of months, and then over time, quality of life will be measured in all of those areas. There's over 100 indicators in the index, and I'm hoping that quality of life will be measured in all of the areas, not just under the act.

14:16
And as we know, of course, in Nova Scotia is the highest rates of disability across the country. And so it's really great that this project is happening here. did, I do just want to remind our listeners that so the Canadian survey on disability is a survey that's done published every five years. And so 2017, the last one was 2022. The next one will be in 2027. So just to give a little context around that and

14:44
And Tammy, back over to you to kind of, yeah, chat more. Sure. She had a comment about something I said. dying to hear. So I'll come back to that in just a second. I just want to note that Engage Nova Scotia is doing great work around quality of life and they've really expanded their definition of disability. So I'm really optimistic about how that survey can also support measuring the quality of life for people with disabilities.

15:09
And I've really enjoyed working with them as an organization as well. So I just want to say that, that I think there's a great opportunity for, you know, partnerships going forward. To go back to what Tova was saying around employment, I'm in a separate, at CBU, I'm working um with the Immigrant Services Association of Nova Scotia and with some colleagues at St. Mary's University on a project that's looking specifically at employment supports for immigrants with disabilities in Nova Scotia.

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And so we have a range of things we're trying to do with this project. We want to get the perspectives of immigrants with disabilities, whether they're employed, looking for employment, or have faced barriers. We want to talk to them. We also want to talk to employers who've hired immigrants with disabilities so they can talk about the positive aspects that people need to know about. And we want to talk to service providers to look at what kinds of challenges do service providers face, whether they're

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service providers for the immigrant population, the disability population, and hopefully the intersection of both, which is sometimes a challenge. We haven't had as much response to our call for participants as I had hoped. I do understand that there's sometimes a challenge with people identifying having a disability if they are also an immigrant, because for some they feel it's a perceived risk.

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But we are still recruiting participants to try to understand their experiences. And the goal of this project em is to uh develop a toolkit to em build disability-confident employers and to really make the case for hiring immigrants with disabilities in Nova Scotia. It's part of funding from a larger project from SHRC that's across the country, but we're really focusing on Nova Scotia First to see what we can figure out about Nova Scotia First.

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before we think about expanding the project. um And just by the low uptake in terms of response, I feel like there are participants here. It's just really hard to get to them and to learn their experiences. But that's why I think it's so important, right? Because it's a really under-studied area. It's not as understood as it should be. And there's so much benefit to hiring people with disabilities in terms of diversity.

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inclusion, all kinds of benefits there, right? And so my goal is with that project is to really promote inclusion in that way. May I, Tammy, just recommend, give me a ring because not only do my staff who are clearly working with that community, but I can connect you probably to clients who are willing to have that discussion. You know, I think often when they see those things come through, as you said, there's a certain amount of I'm not going to be outing myself. Whereas through the agencies like mine that work so much and so closely with the intersectional communities you're talking about.

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it might be valued to just kind of come directly. And I'm gonna say in all honesty, I could have gotten that survey, but I get so many sometimes, and I don't know exactly the sources, and I don't know quite what they're doing with it. You get a little bit jaded. And I hate to say it in front of you, Tammy, because the work you do is so incredibly integral. But I have to say that sometimes we get a little bit of a sense of now who wants to know what I already told them 30 times, or whatever, you know, that sense of not understanding the importance and the possibilities of the work you're doing.

18:27
So please reach out and I promise not to delete. I really, really do want to improve the situation for people with disabilities across the country. And all of the work I do is very much because I really believe that inclusion is important and it goes beyond access. Yeah. Yeah. And Tammy, I love that while you're a researcher in an academic community is absolutely at the center of your work. So really love that.

18:52
I'm curious from both of your perspectives, is there a story or a data point that people should really be paying attention to? And by people, I do mean, you know, Nova Scotians, but in particular employers, workplaces, what should we really be paying attention to, you know, in 2025 about kind of the context, the realities, the lived experiences of people with disabilities and employment in particular?

19:21
Well, I may. I come from a simple belief and it was actually, did an article on this last week in LinkedIn and it's right person, right job. None of us who all are advocates for persons with disabilities and in my case, certainly some others, a first person voice, nobody wants the wrong person in the wrong job. That doesn't help me. It doesn't help the employer. It doesn't help the person with a disability trying to fit in. It's a lose, lose, lose. And that's why I talk about win, win, win because that means you have found the right person. But.

19:50
What we need employers to understand is the right person doesn't always fit the old job ad. So my first statement to any employer is throw out your job ads, all of them. I don't even want to see them. I don't need to. What I want to do is work with you on what your priorities are. And you can't have 13 musts and you can't have all of these things. Must have a degree. Well, I mean, obviously I want my surgeon to have a degree, but really do you must have a degree to work in this office to help people who require help?

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or is a life of experience and so on as important. It's really shifting the paradigm towards the, especially the disability paradigm, which is that we are broken and require fixing, of course, to the social or I call it human rights paradigm, which is simply including us, giving us a chance to not only have a voice in our own situations, like through these mechanisms that Tammy works with, but also to have a voice in everyone's world, just like anyone else. And unfortunately, even employers,

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who have a person with disability in their lives or they themselves are so stigmatized, they still can't kind of believe that this person could do it. I used to have a gentleman very quickly, a gentleman who happened to have one arm and it was fine. He worked on an assembly line forever. But when that assembly line closed, he called me, cause I happened to know him and he said, I need another place to work. And it was a candle wax thing. Anyway, a soy of candles with stems. Long story short is they said, he can't work here, he has one arm.

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kidding me? And I said, if he can do it, you know, will you include him? And he said, Yeah, but it's not going to happen. A $5 winch, which for those who don't know, because I didn't know, is a piece of wood that fits the bottle of a jar. And he did everything everyone else did simply by having a winch to put the bottle in, or the jar in, and then do what he had to do. So what that employer learned, and he's still there, is that this could have been

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right person, right job from day one, but I was so convinced that people with disability are broken. And we still, in North America, we are still the lowest employed marginalized community of any community. So let alone we get into the intersectional, which is beyond me. And that's where Tammy comes in, of course. But I really need to say, if there's one thing I want employers to think about, it's the right person for the right job. We don't want you to include someone who doesn't fit, but you're losing one in three Nova Scotians.

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by being exclusive and only wanting this and must have that. And it's about stepping back and checking out the values and the mission of your agency and ensuring, like your business, and ensuring that it's welcoming everyone. Because if it isn't, you are literally probably not getting the right person for the right job because you're not reaching them.

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And Tova, I love that you also have a book with that title, Win, Win, Win. really, I'm committed to it. I put it on print, but I will send you one of those, But um really important to me is the idea that we all win when the right person gets the job. So thank you for that. Yeah. Thanks so much, Tova. What about you, Tammy? What's a story? What's a data point? Like what's really kind of coming to mind that people need to pay attention to? Yeah, I think.

22:52
There's a couple of things. One is that the definition of disability is an evolving concept. If we look at the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, it doesn't actually define disability. It treats it as an evolving concept. And I think for a lot of people, when they think about disability, they have it in a box. You know, I fit into the box. uh Full disclosure, I fit into the box of disability very neatly sometimes, right?

23:17
But there's such a wide range of experience when it comes to disability. And I think there's a misunderstanding and there's an over medicalization of disability when it comes to accommodations. don't think any employer ever needs to know somebody's medical condition to accommodate them. If you need to medicalize it, I would say the only thing that you should be doing as an employer is asking the person from a medical perspective, what accommodation do you need? It's nobody's business what your medical condition is if your disability is medical.

23:47
Sometimes it's not, right? But I don't think that you have to medicalize somebody to give them an accommodation. I would argue you don't even need to have medical documentation. Most people, not all, uh if they need an accommodation, they actually need an accommodation. They're not making it up. They're not trying to get a benefit that they don't need, right? So that's the first thing is the whole perception of disability and the perception of giving somebody an accommodation. Related to that is the misperception that accommodations are expensive.

24:17
They're onerous, there's a legal liability, all of these things. I require accommodations in my workplace. They don't cost any money. I require my classroom to be closer to my office so that I don't have to go as far to get to where I need to go. It's all about process sometimes. Sure, there might be accommodations that require some funding, as is the example that Tova gave, but usually it's not very onerous in terms if we want to think about profits.

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versus spending and all that sort of thing. I think the investment is worth it for em the productivity and if you have the right person in the right job, you give accommodations all the time for different things, for things like when people have children or religious accommodations. Disability accommodations are the same thing. And so I think that's really important. The other point I want to make is that the reason I feel so strongly about quality of life is because

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There's a bidirectional link between poverty and disability and it's so strong. And if you think about things like the disability benefit, $200 a month for somebody, if they qualify, it's income tested. So if your income is a little bit over the margin, you don't even get the full $200 a month for a uh basic benefit. I don't know who that's supposed to support in a meaningful way.

25:39
So even when we think about income supports in this country at a federal level, there's so much work to be done because to income test $200 a month for people who are already struggling because of all the barriers related to employment, I think it is a real problem. Sorry, it's kind of beyond the employment.

25:58
but I think it's really important because- So connected, so connected, Tam. You can't avoid one of those conversations without the other. Yeah, income and employment and income supports the number one social determinant of health, which is very strongly connected to quality of life. I just get so, you know, in, I guess, not enraged, but I feel very passionate about this. I really want to change that perception of burden, but also recognizing that

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systems we have are not working the way they should, in my opinion. Yeah, really, really great points, Tammy. And you talked about accommodations and that myth that they are expensive. And we know that Canadian research says that most accommodations cost less than $500. And even that, many, as you talked about, are free. They are about flexibility. They are about, you know, where are you located?

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all of those things. But also a couple hundred dollar accommodation to get the right person and the right job. There isn't an employer in Nova Scotia who wouldn't think twice and want to do it because it is so much more expensive to replace the wrong person. It's so much more expensive than the person comes in and they aren't doing what they say they can do and things like that. There's so many elements to that. Whereas for a

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a straight up person explaining their need and understanding how to disclose. Cause that's something I work a lot on at the ground level, which is people being able to communicate their requirements around accommodation without feeling like they have to spill their whole life story. it's very, you know, I'm on the ground going, don't spill your life story because people don't really know how it's going to be responded to. And it's so important. We understand that that amount of money is so nominal in the career of the right person that you've just hired. Yeah. Really great point.

27:44
So I'm curious, continues to give you hope? Tammy, you talked about passion. What fuels your passion? What continues to give you hope kind of in the work that you're doing? We know there's a lot of barriers and challenges, but what is the spark that kind of fuels your continued passion for this work? Tammy, why don't you go first and forward to you, Tova. I love this question because I have a lot of hope. As much as I get angry sometimes, I have a lot of hope.

28:12
A couple of things come to mind. When I moved back to Nova Scotia, I hadn't lived here for a long time. And to see the amount of awareness about disability, the fact that we have an act, we have an accessibility directorate, I think this gives me hope because there's a lot of good people doing good work to raise awareness and to also legislate access, right? The human right to access, I think it's really important. So I'm very hopeful.

28:39
from a legislative perspective, but also if I think about community organizing, there's so much I feel, and maybe it's just because when you're in one setting, then you kind of get connected to others. I just feel like there's a community of people that are really working on access and inclusion, whether it's from an employment perspective, but other kinds of community organizing as well. And I just feel that in Nova Scotia, there's a lot of people who uh really

29:07
want to improve the quality of life for people with disabilities. I think that focusing on the people who want to help in that movement, you could say, I think is really important. So between the legislative pieces that are coming into place, but also the commitment from the community level as well. I feel it's been quite positive over the last couple of years that I've been back home. I guess five years now, yeah. Great. So for me, I guess the hope.

29:36
Okay, wanna be, I don't wanna turn into the other side, because I have a lot of confusing thoughts. Let me clarify this. I have hope because very much like Tammy said, just to piggyback that, the people I'm working with right now in the community are fantastic people. And you start to really see that that commitment is by no means superficial. People are taking on roles that don't pay as they should and don't give, but they see the reward. The reward.

30:03
for me and is the hope, the hope is the reward. What I mean by that is watching clients coming in with no hope and no confidence. And I'll ask them things like, what are you good at? Generally, just to get a sense for employment. And they'll say nothing. I expected to hear, don't know. But the nothing really floored me. I'm hearing that less and that gives me hope. I'm hearing people coming in and going, no, I have skills. And then we just have to sort of measure how they would work in you know, in a line with employers and so on. But

30:31
I'm hearing it much less than I used to. The message being people are starting to come out of that self stigma and maybe really understand there's a lot going on in their community and they're being recognized in a way that allows them to say, I'm valuable. I'm not sure where I'm gonna fit in, but I'm worth figuring that out with. And we agree and it's really made our work easier in a sense because I do believe people are coming in and they're seeing this kind of work that Tammy's talking about and really.

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feeling a little bit more represented. And I think that's very powerful. Great. Well, I want to thank you both. It's been a really encouraging conversation, but also interesting from your diverse perspectives. uh But your passion, your commitment to the work really shines through here. So thank you both for joining us today. Call me Tani. Keep an eye out for the baseline report that will come out shortly. Thank you so much for the opportunity. I've really enjoyed this.

31:28
Thank you. Okay.

31:31
Yeah, wonderful. as well. Thanks so much for the time. Thanks for tuning in. You can learn more at our website, CChangeCollab.com. That's S-E-A-C-H-A-N-G-E-C-O-L-A-B dot com. I hope you join us for our next conversation.