Vancouver B.C. – BC’s Office of the Human Rights Commissioner (BCOHRC) has taken further steps to build accessibility into its work by relaunching its main website, bchumanrights.ca, with accessible design as its foundation. The site also features new pages where multilingual B.C. residents can find human rights resources in the language of their choice. To encourage people to visit the newly refreshed site, the Office has launched a campaign highlighting its educational and informational work, inviting people to #DiscoverBCOHRC.
In British Columbia, over 20 per cent of people between the ages of 15 and 64 are living with a disability according to Statistics Canada’s 2022 research. But much of our world—including online spaces—is often set up in ways that exclude people. People with motor impairments, visual impairments and cognitive disabilities, Blind people and others with disabilities often experience barriers when trying to access information online, including information about their human rights.
When people visit bchumanrights.ca to #DiscoverBCOHRC and its work, they may notice important new features such as larger font sizes to make text more readable against coloured backgrounds and pages that provide key translated materials grouped by language. There are also many improvements that will be significant to those who use screen readers or keyboard navigation. Specific added features are described on the Office’s Accessibility page.
To ensure everyone in B.C. can access information and educational materials about their human rights, BCOHRC undertook an accessibility audit of its website in 2023. Around the same time, the Office consulted with a range of organizations and advocates in B.C. who pointed to ways the site could be more accessible to people in B.C. who speak languages other than English. Statistics Canada data from 2021 shows 3.3 per cent of people in B.C. do not understand English or French. The refreshed bchumanrights.ca website reflects lessons learned from this work.
The Office plans to regularly re-audit its site and solicit feedback from visitors, understanding that accessibility is a continuous process.
“Accessibility of information, spaces and services is essential to the realization of human rights,” said Commissioner Kasari Govender. “Given my Office’s responsibility to provide information and education to the B.C. public, we have a responsibility to regularly audit our resources and engage with community feedback. This website relaunch is an important piece of that work since digital spaces have become vital points of connection and are the way many people access information. I hope the changes we’re launching today will help more of the B.C. public #DiscoverBCOHRC and engage with our work.”
This accessibility upgrade will help to ensure as many people as possible are able to access key human rights resources, including educational materials and important information about how human rights can be protected and respected in B.C.
The Commissioner invites all B.C. residents to #DiscoverBCOHRC by visiting the website: bchumanrights.ca
Resources
- Accessibility at BC’s Office of the Human Rights Commissioner: A December 2023 report describing our Office’s approach to accessibility and measures being taken
- BCOHRC resources in other languages: 简体中文 | 繁體中文 | Français | ਪੰਜਾਬੀ | فارسی | Tagalog | 한국어 | Español | عربى | Tiếng Việt
- #RewriteTheRules: A 2022 educational campaign on ableism
- Human rights resources by language can be found on our homepage: bchumanrights.ca
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About BCOHRC
BC’s Office of the Human Rights Commissioner exists to address the root causes of inequality, discrimination and injustice in B.C. by shifting laws, policies, practices and cultures. We do this work through education, research, advocacy, inquiry and monitoring. Learn more at: bchumanrights.ca
About the Commissioner
Kasari Govender began her work as B.C.’s first independent human rights commissioner in September 2019. As an independent officer of the Legislature, Commissioner Govender is uniquely positioned to ensure human rights in B.C. are protected, respected and advanced on a systemic level. In her first five-year term, her work through BC’s Office of the Human Rights Commissioner included a public inquiry into experiences of hate in the pandemic, a report on systemic discrimination in policing, community embedded research about a range of human rights issues experienced by British Columbians, public awareness campaigns about ableism and racism and guidance to government that, among other things, informed the creation of both the Anti-Racism Data Act and the Anti-Racism Act. Commissioner Govender was reappointed for a second term beginning in September 2024.
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