October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM). It is a significant occasion dedicated to celebrating the contributions of individuals with disabilities in our workforce and highlighting the importance of fostering inclusive workplaces.
According to the latest publication released by Statistics Canada in December 2025, it states that organizations must deliberately and proactively incorporate accessibility into their design for the 8 million Canadians living with a disability. It covers employment; the built environment; information and communication technologies; the procurement of goods, services, and facilities; the design and delivery of programs and services; and transportation. It identifies several barriers for persons with disabilities in the labour market and workplace. These include limited knowledge of accessible and inclusive hiring and management practices; stigma and attitudinal barriers; and inflexible, complex staffing tools and processes such as job advertisements and interview procedures.
Centennial is committed to creating a welcoming, accessible, and inclusive environment. This includes policies, procedures, and practices that embed the principles of Universal Design (UD) to help everyone thrive. Centennial strives to proactively identify and remediate accessibility barriers to minimize their impact on community members.
The launch of its new 2026 to 2031 Multi-Year Accessibility Plan (MYAP), developed by the College’s AODA Committee, highlights a shared responsibility and stronger accountability toward the integration of accessible practices, and recently, as part of this effort, the College created a strategy to improve how it notifies community members about service disruptions that impact campus mobility and access. These include elevator and automatic-operated door outages. The new strategy prioritizes these outages and notifies people of important details, including campus locations and the expected time to fix the issue. People will also be notified when the outage has been fixed. This information is available on the College’s Accessibility Webpage, the Centennial College Safety App, and ServiceNow.