Biography:
Peter Tonge worked as a manager at Statistics Canada specializing in international trade. As a criminal defence attorney, Peter worked on thousands of cases, often representing clients with mental health and addiction issues.
Drawing on his legal career and day-to-day experience as a wheelchair user, Peter founded Peter Tonge Consulting. The organization works with clients to address disability issues such as accessibility, inclusion, community engagement, human rights and policy development.
Presentation: Accessibility Plans: Insights for Inclusive Community Engagement
When it comes to making our spaces accessible, it’s about more than just ticking boxes. It takes engagement, comprised of representation, including and with consideration of intersectionality, age, Indigeneity, racialized, and parents and non-parents, representing a broad range of disabilities, to balance perspectives. This workshop will showcase the process of creating accessibility plans that welcome everyone to the table.
Drawing inspiration from real-life examples from Peter Tonge Consulting’s work with the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and rural Manitoba municipalities, we’ll learn about inclusive organizational planning practices and their outcomes. These examples will demonstrate how engagement and including the deaf and disability community, who are members of leadership, staff, and volunteer teams, can lead to comprehensive Accessibility Plans and transform organizations.
Through these stories and discussions, participants will learn practical tips for recruitment, engagement, retention, and support for developing inclusive community engagement that will allow Accessibility Plans to thrive.
