A new model of inclusion

Using a bank machine. Applying for a passport. Navigating a university campus. Many of us take these everyday activities for granted, but for the 10% of Canadians living with a cognitive disability, such tasks can prove challenging or even impossible.

“Our environment is not built with cognitive accessibility in mind,” says Virginie Cobigo, a professor of Psychology at the University of Ottawa. She has spent her academic career conducting research on how to make the world an easier place to navigate for individuals living with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Even though this segment of the population represents the largest group of persons living with a disability in Canada, they are often under-represented.  “We know how wide a wheelchair ramp should be but not what constitutes plain language,” she says.  

After a decade of academic research, Professor Cobigo wanted to find a way to translate her findings to the real world. In 2019, she began advising a technology developer on an app to manage medications for people with Dementia. “That project helped me understand the value of my expertise,” she says.  

The success of that project led to the creation of The Open Collaboration for Cognitive Accessibility (or “Open” for short) at the University of Ottawa the following year. 

Open is a rare model that functions as a fee-for-service non-profit social enterprise. It provides academic research on cognitive accessibility to government and industry partners to help make their products and services more accessible to individuals living with cognitive disabilities. Unique to Open is the fact that it places the lived experiences of individuals with cognitive disabilities at the centre of the conversation, a perspective that has rarely been included in discussions about accessibility standards and design.  

Professor Cobigo’s approach is working. Demand for Open’s useable, practical research is growing. 

For example, Open just completed a project for the Bank of Canada to advise on the cognitive accessibility of a digital payment system. Through real-world testing, Open’s team of advisors determined that the banking authentication process was not accessible. The Bank of Canada will use these findings to remove barriers to its services in the future.  

Open is working with other industry and government partners to make workplaces more accessible, public signage more intelligible, and services like filling out a form, more straight-forward. The possibilities are limitless and the growth opportunities immense, she says.  

Through support from the Azrieli Foundation, Professor Cobigo has been able to scale up her team of advisors from 10 to 40 people ranging in age from 10 to 80 years old, all of them self-identified as neurodiverse or as having a cognitive disability.  

“The Azrieli Foundation has enabled us to form long-term relationships with advisors and build capacity in the number of advisors that can be brought into our core team. This has been an important impact of the grant,” she says.  

Dominic Couture (left) is a member of the Open team and is also Autistic. He is trained as a linguist and holds the position of Manager of Linguistics, a position that was made possible by the grant made to the University of Ottawa from the Azrieli Foundation. Dominic’s lived experience has added an invaluable layer to his work.   

“I realized as I gained more experience that language accessibility is a form of applied linguistics, which is my field of study,” Dominic says. “The applied linguist solves problems that are related to language and that’s exactly what I do at Open by modifying text to make it more accessible to the text’s target audiences.” 

“The expertise our advisors have on cognitive accessibility is unique and we hope to continue to work alongside them to inform accessibility standards and design for an increasing number of our external partners,” says Professor Cobigo. “There is nothing we can do without our advisors.”

(Left: Dominic Couture, Manager of Linguistic Operations, Open Collaboration for Cognitive Accessibility)

  (Banner photo: Virginie Cobigo, professor of Psychology at the University of Ottawa)