We have finally made it to the last standard. The Transportation standard. Now believe it or not there are many laws that govern public and private transportation. For instance when you buy flight tickets the airlines must transport you to your destination. The laws have also started incorporating accessibility. This standard applies to transportation organizations that work solely within Ontario and are part of the public section. This section is broken up into two parts first is on conventional transportation service provider and specialized transportation service provider. For the most part conventional and specialize are pretty much the same. They include all types of vehicles like buses, ferries, street cars and etc.
The big difference is that specialized transportation service providers only serve people with disabilities. Examples of conventional transportation service provider would be TTC (Toronto Transit Commission), YRT (York Region Transit) and such. Examples of specialized transportation service providers would be Wheeltrans, or Mobility Trust.
Transportation service providers need to follow lots of requirements to be considered compliant with the transportation standard. These requirements can be grouped into two camps. General requirements and technical requirements.
General Requirement:
Safety Policies: Safety is a pretty broad topic, for the purposes of this post I will only be speaking about additional safety policies that protect people with disabilities. This includes ensuring people with disabilities are able to be board safely and are secured in place prior to the vehicle departing. This could be giving the elderly more time to board and walk to their seat or that ensure that wheelchairs are locked in place prior to a bus departing.
Training:
All staff that interact with passenger needs to be trained on how to handle a variety of different situations involving people with different disabilities. It is not just about helping an individual with a disability but helping in a way that respects their independence and dignity. This also includes how to help not just during regular operation but what to do during emergencies and vehicle breakdowns. Training needs to include how to use all accessibility related devices and what to do when devices malfunction.
Emergencies:
The staff and vehicles need to be ready in case of emergencies. All the transportation service providers need to have policies in place that document what to do in case of an emergency. This can be if the vehicle gets into a crash or during a fire. The staff members need to have regular training sessions to prepare. In addition to staff, any passenger should be able to request this information. This leads into the next section.
Information:
The transportation service providers must provide information to the public regarding all the accessible equipment available and instructions for what to do during an emergency. This information must also be available in accessible formats. So for instance if someone is blind information can be given in an audio format or in braille. It would be pretty useless to hand over a pamphlet to someone who can not see.
Next post we will go over the technical requirements. And specialized transportation.