Accessibility Plan

About Transat Tours Canada

A specialist in holiday travel, Transat Tours Canada develops and commercializes a vast array of products, including beach vacations and guided tours, under the Transat and Air Transat brands.

Founded in Montreal 35 years ago, Transat has achieved worldwide recognition as a provider of leisure travel. Known especially as an airline under the Air Transat brand, Transat also brings together specialized tour operators and retail distributors of vacation travel products. It offers products and services for discovering fabulous international destinations, mainly in Europe, in the Caribbean and on the East and West coasts of the U.S. It also has a growing focus on South America and Africa.

Introduction

At Transat Tours Canada, we live up to our obligations to our clientele, our colleagues, society, and the environment. We work tirelessly to build and maintain an organization that remains united, focused, and true to its values across borders.

We recognize the fundamental right of all individuals to be treated with dignity and respect and are committed to identifying, preventing, and removing barriers to ensure, accessible travel and for persons living with a disability.

Fully committed to fulfilling our requirements under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005, we hereby outline the steps we are taking to identify and remove barriers for our clients and employees. This accessibility plan which will be reviewed and updated at least once every 5 years.

Customer Service

At Transat Tours Canada, we recognize that not all our clientele has the same needs, and we work closely with our partners and suppliers to best accommodate our customers with special needs.

We have put in place a process which enables our customers to communicate their special needs at time of booking directly to us or via their travel agency. Once informed of the requirements, we ensure that:

• The appropriate airline codes are entered in our system to ensure adequate accommodation is provided throughout the air portion of the journey.
• When ground transportation and/or hotel accommodation is included, special needs requests are communicated in advance to our local suppliers at destination.
• If a specific need cannot be met, customers are duly informed and offered alternate options.

Employment

At Transat Tours Canada, we foster an environment where inclusiveness, respect, and equity reign. We strive to have a workforce that reflects the diversity of our customer base as well as the communities we serve. We encourage people from designated and under-represented groups to apply for our positions.

We have implemented a flexible work-at-home policy to provide our employees with as much flexibility as possible to find the work arrangement that best suits them. In addition, our employees have access to best practice guides and advice on how to adapt their workstations both in person and remotely.

That said, we are aware that we still have limited knowledge of our employees living with disabilities. We also need to review our recruitment practices to ensure that they facilitate the hiring of people living with a disability.

To achieve our goal of a diverse and inclusive workplace, we are committed to:

• Implementing and promoting the new self-identification questionnaire;
• Reviewing available workforce data to better understand gaps for people living with disabilities;
• Analyzing our human resources practices to identify potential barriers and correct any exclusionary mechanisms
• Promoting mechanisms for employees living with a disability to share their experiences and concerns;
• Providing learning opportunities for employees, managers and specialists on accessibility.

Information and communication

We recognize that it is essential to make our telecommunication systems, computer systems and network, including our website and mobile app, accessible to all.

Our website already meets WCAG 2.0 Level AA accessibility criteria, including ensuring that navigation and presentation mechanisms are consistent and easily accessible. For example, text can be enlarged to 200% without any readability loss and colour alone is never used to transmit information.

To ensure that we are always compliant with Level AA accessibility standards, we developed a quality assurance process through the Siteimprove tool. An accessibility committee monitors the accessibility rating of our website monthly and takes the appropriate actions to fix any issues.

We also ensure that communication with our clientele can be readily achieved through several channels including phone, mail, email, social media, chat or an online form. Communication can be in the official language of the passenger's choice.

People who are deaf, hard of hearing or have a speech impediment can contact us for any past or future travel-related inquiries by accessing the Bell Relay Service.

We also ensure that our internal websites and digital communications for our employees meet accessibility standards.

In the area of information and communication, we are committed to:

• Continuing to ensure that new systems (internal and publicly facing), including hardware and software purchased or developed in-house, meet modern accessibility standards;
• Keeping abreast of new communications technologies and taking them into account in the development and acquisition of new software;
• Making essential information on our website and mobile application available in accessible formats.

Consultations

Consultation with various stakeholders is the basis for improving our practices. We consider it essential to consult with our customers and staff living with disabilities to identify barriers and develop solutions that will meet their specific needs.

In developing this plan, we consulted with employees and clients living with a disability to gather and incorporate their feedback. This consultation also helped to ensure that our plan was written in plain language.

Finally, the comments and feedback received through various channels, from our customers and employees, allow us to better identify and understand the barriers they face.

In keeping with this approach, we are committed to:

• Consulting with people living with a disability, developing an ongoing dialogue and prioritizing their participation in work groups;
• Communicating our accessibility commitments and action plans;
• Supporting our accessibility work group that is responsible for evaluating the progress of our accessibility plan.

Conclusion

We firmly believe that accessibility is an organization-wide issue. It is important to us that accessibility be a priority at all levels and for all services offered, with the goal of eliminating and preventing obstacles that could be encountered by people living with a disability.

The accessibility plan presented here is a continuation of the concrete actions that our organization is taking to satisfy our diverse employees and clientele. In addition, we are striving to continue to adapt our practices in light of the feedback we receive.

Our dedicated Accessibility Work Group will allow us to continually monitor and improve the actions outlined in this plan and in subsequent progress reports.

Additional information

For more information on this accessibility plan, please contact us at customerrelations@transat.com.

Our accessibility plan is publicly posted at Standard and accessible form of this document are free upon request from.