Community Engagement and Consultation Guide

Community engagement is vital to advancing equity and inclusion at the University of Waterloo. Members of equity-denied groups face unique barriers that other University community members do not. This includes persons with disabilities who face barriers that include attitudes, systemic processes, and physical design. The views of equity-denied groups, including disabled persons, are often not well represented in decision-making processes and thus result in amplified barriers within our institution. Participation is a fundamental human rights principle, and we must include the voices of disabled persons in all the work occurring on campus. Community engagement with disabled persons will result in our projects better serving the disability community and reaching more accessible outcomes.

This Guide aims to provide guidance on deciding when and how to engage with members of equity-denied groups, with a focus on persons with disabilities, as a way to support the integration of lived experiences into the University of Waterloo projects and processes. The common adage “nothing about us without us” iterates the importance of lived experiences as central to leading and advancing accessibility and inclusion.

This Guide complements the work of the Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Racism in How to Consult & Engage with Groups from Marginalized Identities, which offers useful information on key terms and navigating power and positionality in community engagement.

This Guide consists of a series of linked webpages that can also be accessed as a MS Word document: Equitable Community Engagement Guide for Disability Inclusion. 

Community engagement is a formal process in which we can value our community members' voices, ideas, and lived experiences. This Guide considers community engagement as a broader set of strategic processes that aim to empower and involve equity-denied communities beyond limited consultations.

It is vital that we acknowledge that community engagement at the University of Waterloo is often done from a position of power and privilege. We must meaningfully design all community engagement with a user-centered approach that incorporates purposeful decolonization efforts and recognition of intersectional equity-deserving identities.

This guide builds on five overarching principles that are essential to planning for inclusive and equitable community engagement:

1. We value our community members and must center their voices and ideas in each of our projects. 
2. Our goal is to empower members of the disability community to impact decision-making by amplifying voices and meaningfully designing participation and engagement opportunities.
3. Lived experiences are a form of expertise that must be valued in project planning and implementation.
4. Stories are a meaningful form of data that can challenge dominant narratives and amplify voices beyond the abilities of quantitative data.
5. Proactive planning for accessibility and disability inclusion, including in budgets and timelines, are necessary to ensure inclusive and equitable consultations.

The following six sections review different aspects of and relevant tools for community engagement.