In August 2017, St. Catharines resident Erik Burggraaf made it through two interviews and a month-long wait before hearing back on a sales associate position at a Welland, Ont., call centre.
When the call finally came in, Burggraaf told CBC News he felt “fatalistic” after hearing he didn’t get the job, despite Convergys, the company he applied to, saying “he was a qualified candidate.”
“I’ve probably applied to 30-40 call centre jobs in my life to at least a dozen different companies and I’ve never been able to land one,” said Burggraaf, who graduated with two diplomas in computer hardware and computer programming and analysis. “If I wanted an IT job, I would have to start at an entry level position.”
In 2018, Burggraaf filed a human rights complaint against Convergys, now acquired by Concentrix. The wait for a decision from the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (HRTO) came to an end on October 17 — seven years later.
The tribunal ordered the company to pay $20,000 for injury to dignity, feelings and self-respect, as well as $8,472 for lost wages. The company was also ordered to develop accommodating hiring policies and accessible interview processes for blind candidates.
In the decision, tribunal member Romona Gananathan wrote the company “failed in their procedural duty to accommodate when they did not explore further accommodation solutions with the applicant.”
CBC News reached out to Concentrix for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.
With a resume that listed experience in training and testing experience accessibility programs for organizations such as the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, Burggraaf says the company “made no attempts to include [him] in any discussions related to [his] accommodations whatsoever.”
According to the decision, an IT operations employee at Convergys claimed to have tested trial versions and free screen readers, which are software that read on-screen information by speech or through a refreshable braille display.
The employee concluded none “adequately” worked nor was interactive with their customer relationship management software. Convergys also claimed the position requires being able to “independently navigate and use” AT&T’s proprietary software, their sole client.
Burggraaf says the company “did the most basic investigation … to prove their preconception that I couldn’t be placed in the job.”
A 2022 Statistics Canada report found that 6.9 per cent of Canada’s working age population with disabilities were unemployed, that is almost double the unemployment rate of those without disabilities.
However, many blind people go on to have successful careers in fields including, video-game streaming, cosmetics or law, among others.
David Lepofsky is a blind lawyer, now retired, and chairs the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance (AODA Alliance).
He says the case is nothing new, having established no breakthroughs or new rights. It has, however, demonstrated a “fundamentally broken” human rights code enforcement process.
“You can’t get a decision until well after the office where you wanted to work has closed,” said Lepofsky.
“The event happened in 2017. It took eight years for the human rights tribunal to hold a hearing and then decide this case. That is horrific, but not unusual,” he said, pointing at the HRTO’s longstanding backlog and staffing shortage issues.
“Under our human rights law — again settled for decades — the employer had the duty to do both investigate solutions and accommodate unless it can prove that it was impossible to do anything more without undue hardship to the company,” said Lepofsky.
Gananathan wrote that Convergys “failed to pursue any accommodation options with their client [AT&T] who also had obligations under the Code and may have had some solutions,” and also failed to consult accommodation experts such as the Canadian National Institute for the Blind.
In 2021, Burggraaf landed a job providing workers with disabilities adaptive tools at Shared Services Canada with a team, he says, that approaches situations involving accommodation “with an incredible degree of compassion.”
“I would like to see more of that in the private sector,” he said.
