#AbleTo
Prepare students for work using the Field Guide

Improving the capacity and ability of campus service providers who support students with disabilities searching for work

In collaboration with post-secondary institutions across Ontario, we created the #AbleTo Prepare Students for Work Field Guide. The guide presents four practices for post-secondary institutions to follow to improve the capacity and ability of their campus service providers to support students with disabilities with their employment needs.

Your post-secondary institution can adopt these practices in any order. You do not necessarily need to follow them in sequence or in full. What counts is that you take action to improve how your post-secondary institution serves the career and employment aspirations of students with disabilities.

With each practice you adopt, your campus will become even more inclusive and accessible for all students.

Access the Field Guide:

Read about the four practices in brief:

Work together
across your campus

Practice in brief

Create more formal connection points and opportunities for knowledge sharing, so student-facing service providers of your post-secondary institutions know how to satisfy student needs when such needs fall outside the role or expertise of a particular service provider. People in your institution may have informal conversations already, but this practice enables them to be more intentional about collaboration across campus.

Access the practice in full

Get students with disabilities
and employers preparing
for employment early

Practice in brief

Gain insight on the different employment experiences and pathways of students with disabilities. Understand the steps students take as they seek meaningful employment. Identify the barriers students with disabilities typically face on their employment journeys. Remove these barriers and support more inclusive employment journeys for students. Learn how to discuss with employers the actions necessary to make employment pathways easier to access for students, especially students with disabilities.

Access the practice in full

Design accessible career
and networking events

Practice in brief

Gain knowledge and resources necessary to design employment and career events—from the ground up—so that all students are able to attend. Such knowledge and resources extend to enabling your post-secondary institution to make its existing events accessible to all students. This practice also involves knowing how to design and host events meant for students with disabilities specifically.

Access the practice in full

Support students with disabilities
to explore and address
their career needs

Practice in brief

The Employment Pathways Facilitator gives students with disabilities the opportunity to explore and address their specific needs in developing skills, accessing just-in-time services and resources, and gaining work-related experience.

The EPF was developed in recognition of the fact that a student’s lived experience of their disability is not only unique, but also goes hand in hand with how they choose to navigate their employment journey. This recognition differs from how post-secondary institutions often address the needs of students with disabilities—through separate services devoted to disability-related needs and employment-related needs.

The EPF is designed to be not only comprehensive, but also flexible. Any post-secondary institution can adopt the EPF model, regardless of the organization’s makeup. For instance, one person or unified team within a college or university could be assigned to carry out all its nine functions; or these functions could be assigned to several people throughout a post-secondary institution.

Coming soon

How we created the Field Guide

We carried out applied research to understand the causes of the employment gap that exists between post-secondary students with disabilities and their non-disabled peers. As a result of this research, we realized that colleges and universities, in collaboration with employers, could take specific actions to close this gap. Even better, we saw how we could use our research findings and conclusions to come up with best practices that post-secondary institutions can apply to prepare students with disabilities for work.

Collaborators

#AbleTo is a team effort. From the very start, our efforts relied on the close cooperation and support of many organizations from several sectors, in addition to the funding we received from the Ministry of Colleges and Universities. These essential collaborators are governments, post-secondary institutions, educational organizations and community groups. Each has contributed in their own important way. We thank them all.

Ontario Pilot Schools

Ottawa Pilot Schools