Calgary is falling below the passing grade for accessibility, said Canadian technology company AccessNow, in a new Mapping Cities for All (MOCA) report published this week.

The company, which maps the accessibility of locations like businesses, restaurants, parks, and amenities, visited locations across Alberta—which included 17 rural locations in addition to Calgary—as well as Ottawa and Vancouver.

The company’s findings found that only 35 per cent of Calgary businesses and locations surveyed were found the be accessible, just over 13 per cent inaccessible, and nearly 52 per cent partially accessible.

Vancouver was found to be 48 per cent, and Ottawa 53 per cent accessible.

“Although folks within the public sector often make statements about making progress and working towards the federal goal of 2040 for a barrier-free Canada, at AccessNow we feel that unless we are actually measuring and documenting how accessibility is experienced by people today, without that data it’s very difficult to make the proper progress that we need,” said Maayan Ziv, CEO of AccessNow.

“Really, it just goes to highlight that people are not really experiencing that meaningful sense of inclusion or belonging. But we did see that within Calgary, there was a very large percentage of findings within that partially accessible category.”

A total of 5,416 locations across Calgary were surveyed by people with lived experience in accessibility and were led by Team Canada Paralympian and accessibility consultant Aaron Prevost.

Part of the criteria used to assess a location included whether the location had a ramp or stairs, whether their power doors were operating, whether was there accessible parking and how many spots, can a disabled person independently access products or services, and are service animals or support people welcome.

Individually ranked locations were then collected into Canada Census dissemination areas, to give an overview of how that area ranked for accessibility.

Largest study to date in Canada

MOCA was the largest research study into accessibility to date in Canada and was undertaken through partnerships with the University of Calgary, Spinal Cord Injury Canada, and BDO.

“I think the importance of a report like this is really to outline the importance of lived experience of disability in making decisions about accessibility and public policy,” said Ziv.

She said that lived experience directly impacted the ability of their teams to collect and collate information about accessibility, and in the case of Calgary, to go deeper to deliver community-level insights.

Prevost said that the issues identified during their survey of the city were directly connected to the age of communities. Older communities such as Inglewood or Crescent Heights had less accessibility than places like Auburn Bay.

The latter, he said, actually had business plazas that had been specifically designed to be as accessible as possible—something that has not always been a priority during building construction throughout the city’s history.

“We found that inaccessible places, a lot of it was wheelchair based, which isn’t good, because it’s not good for the business either. Some places just had no idea they weren’t being accessible, and some were trying to come up with things that they could do to make their place a little more wheelchair friendly,” Prevost said.

He used the example of how those businesses might try and be accommodating by offering service outside of their storefront on the sidewalk, but that is in itself a less than ideal situation because it is less dignified for people who have an inability to access a location.

“One of the big barriers I think they’re going to find is financial. Aftermarket accessibility stuff is definitely not cheap, so if you’re trying to put in a ramp or maybe your business has stairs, and you need to get a lift, that’s going to be a barrier,” Prevost said.

“Businesses have to be resilient and proactive to help if they can’t afford it to help find the funding to improve their space. Because the fact of the matter is, if more people with disabilities can use a business, they’re going to make more money.”

Findings mirror those of other disability advocates

Rob Halfyard, CEO of Resourceful Futures, a firm that provides disability services for Calgarians, said that there are definitely areas in Calgary that have significant issues with access—especially in northeast Calgary.

“None of them can get full community inclusion by coming to their most valuable program during the day, because we have a number of issues in this entire area. There is no sidewalks, so people who are in wheelchairs, walkers and canes when they leave the facility to access the community or even to go out to catch a bus on the main road. They have to walk on streets to get there,” Halfyard said.

“In the winter, it is even more treacherous for their well-being. We are limited on weather conditions of how they can fully access their communities.”

Halfyard said that a big issue that his organization has faced is trying to get the City of Calgary to provide safe sidewalk access in front of businesses, but that issue has been sidestepped by the city provisions for sidewalks in front of businesses in some areas of the city are a private property matter.

“I was told it is not their problem that I would have to go around and talk to every business for them to put in a sidewalk in front of their building,” he said.

“When I look at downtown Calgary, everybody for the most part that’s downtown Calgary has full access to that community and their jobs and all of those things either through the skyways our sidewalks.”

The report was agreement with Halfyard’s assessment, that some portions of northeast Calgary were not sufficiently accessible for users. However, it found that sections of Monterey Park near 16 Avenue and Stoney Trail were in the most-accessible category assessed.

Calgary’s downtown, despite having the ability to access sidewalks and the Plus 15 network, was identified as ranging from being somewhat accessible along major pedestrian routes like Stephen Avenue, to less accessible in Chinatown, to least accessible in the west end.

The Beltline was ranked less and least accessible, ranging from less in Victoria Park and generally becoming least accessible on 17 Avenue and 14 Street.

Lower rankings the start of the conversation for change, not the end

Some of the surprising outcomes from the study said Prevost, was the number of stores in Calgary that had people who could do sign language.

“The fact that I found stores that actually had some sort of sign language is kind of cool to me, because it was a question on our survey and an important question, but the amount of people that knew it was a lot higher than I thought,” he said.

Less surprising, he said, was the number of businesses that didn’t know the law around service animals, like those used for people who are blind.

In his view, for businesses that ranked as being less accessible or least accessible in the report, the ranking wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, just an indicator of what needs to be done better for all of their customers.

Ziv said that kind of information would hopefully be motivating not just for individual businesses, but for decision-makers and municipal leaders.

“Our goal with this data is to help motivate those who are involved in making decisions, to do the ones that reflect the community’s needs best, and to do so with more informed insights. So, this is just the start for us,” Ziv said.

“Our goal is to help this agenda progress so that Calgary can go from a somewhat-poorly-ranking perceived accessibility score to hopefully in a few years when we revisit this, an improved one.”