Accommodation must be provided to persons with disabilities, particularly when the
accommodation is required to allow that person to access a vital service. A service
provider must find ways to provide accommodation up to the point of undue hardship.
This is a high standard to meet. Even when the accommodation involves extra
expenditures, a service provider would have to demonstrate that those expenditures
seriously compromised the financial viability of the agency or seriously impeded the
agency’s ability to serve its other clients before they could justify the refusal to
accommodate.^52
For example, CCACs have a policy that clients must be able to direct their own care. In
some instances “direct own care” has been interpreted very narrowly to mean using
your own voice to direct care in a manner that an attendant can easily understand. This
interpretation can lead to individuals who use alternative forms of communication, such
as bliss boards, to be denied service on the basis that they cannot direct their own care.
The duty to accommodate would require that clients who use alternative forms of
communication be accommodated, which could involve providing training to attendants
to allow them to interact properly with and take instruction from the client. A failure to
provide such accommodation could amount to discrimination under the Human Rights
Code.
In other cases the rights of a client and those of an attendant may come into conflict.
For instance, a Muslim attendant may not want to enter a home with a dog or they may
not feel comfortable preparing meals with pork. In such cases the rights and obligations
of the parties must be balanced, but it can be argued that the needs of the client should
prevail and the service agency should have to provide an attendant who was able to
meet those needs. The Ontario Human Rights Commission has published a policy
outlining processes and procedures to employ when attempting to resolve disputes
involving competing or conflicting rights.^53
(^52) See Chapter 3 “Human Rights and Disability Law” in this Primer.
(^53) See Ontario Human Rights Commission, online: http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/policy-competing-human-
rights.