Just ahead of International Day of Persons with Disabilities, The City of Kingston presented its 2022 Accessibility Awards.

The free ceremony at City Hall on Friday afternoon featured keynote speaker Desirée Walsh who spoke about her experience as a stand-up comedian with cerebral palsy. One of the award recipients was Leah Riddell, owner of Signable Vi5ion.

"I empower businesses to develop inclusive communication strategies and practices with the goal of improving awareness to engage with different people whether it be they are hard of hearing, with autism, or new to Canada in work or customer service environments...so they are ready to interact," says Riddell.

Signable Vi5ion educates individuals, businesses and corporations on how to create work environments centered around inclusive communication.

"People think they know everything already, but they have more to learn and they can benefit from that, improving on their environments, improving their visual access... not everyone is necessarily showing a label, but it's an opportunity to create the exposure so those environments are able to increase their accessibility...If you have signage, like infographics for example, the information is that much more clear for people to access it and when you are using media, use captioning, provide transcripts, that way you have it as fair access for everyone...information is more widely shared and everyone benefits from it," says Riddell. *This interview was made possible through the use of an ASL interpreter.

Associate professor of mechanical and materials engineering at Queen’s University, Dr. Claire Davies also received an award. Davies teaches the interdisciplinary Building Better Together program for 3rd year biomedical students and 2nd year occupational therapy students. Davies and her students design assistive technology to increase independence for persons with disabilities. She says she tries to put her engineering students into an accessibility mindset.

Bailey Daniels was also recognized for her work with Motion Kingston which provides individuals and their families with mobility and accessibility equipment, and Polson Park Public School won the community organization award for continued upgrades to the playground.

Listen to the full CFRC interview with Leah Riddell and Claire Davies below: