THE BROADCASTING ACCESSIBILITY FUND DATE To: Address Address Address Address Address Address Subject: Broadcasting Accessibility Fund - Call for Stakeholders Dear Sir or Madame, I am writing to you today to provide you with information about the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund (the Fund) that is being established and to inquire whether your organization is interested in becoming an Accessibility Group Stakeholder for the purpose of nominating an Accessibility Group Director to the inaugural Board of Directors for the Fund. What is the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund? The Broadcasting Accessibility Fund is an independent and impartial funding body supporting innovative projects that promote the accessibility of broadcasting content in Canada. The Fund will focus on projects that provide practical solutions and that make use of inclusive design principles. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) directed BCE Inc. to establish the Fund and provide the Fund with initial funding of $5.7M.1 You can find out more about the Fund from the backgrounder accompanying this correspondence, entitled "Broadcasting Accessibility Fund - Backgrounder". Fund Governance Structure and the Role of Stakeholders: The Fund will be governed by the Permanent Board of Directors and that Board will make all the substantive decisions about setting up and operating of the Fund. The CRTC mandated that the Fund shall have nine Directors on its Permanent Board.2 The CRTC also mandated that the Accessibility Group Stakeholders would be divided into subcategories of groups representing persons with sight, hearing, mobility and cognitive disabilities. Each subcategory will elect one Director (for a total of four) and, collectively, all of the subcategories will elect two Independent Accessibility Directors. As a result, six of the nine Directors will be elected by the Accessibility Group Stakeholders. The other three Directors will be elected by Broadcasting Industry Stakeholders. The diagram below provides an illustration of how the Accessibility Group Stakeholders will elect the six Accessibility Group Directors to the Fund Board: Six Directors Elected by Accessibility Group Stakeholders Each accessibilty group, sight, hearing, mobility and cognitive each elect one Director to represent the group. The stakeholders in all groups elect two Independent Accessibility Group Directors. Together this comprises of six elected Directors. Once elected, the Board of Directors of the Fund will recruit an independent funding officer who will be responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Fund under the Board's direction. The Chair of the Permanent Board will be confirmed annually by the Board from among the two Independent Accessibility Directors. Directors will generally be elected to serve on the Board for a term of three (3) years, and may be re-elected to a maximum of six (6) consecutive years. To ensure the continuity of an appropriate number of persons on the Board at all times, the term lengths for the initial Directors will be either two (2) or three (3) years. The Fund is currently governed by an Interim Board of Directors3, whose only mandate is to oversee the fair, impartial and inclusive election of the Permanent Board of Directors by Accessibility Group Stakeholders and Broadcasting Industry Stakeholders. Does Your Organization Qualify to be an Accessibility Group Stakeholder? To qualify as an Accessibility Group Stakeholder, an organization must meet the following three criteria: 1. The organization must: a. be incorporated under provincial or federal law; or b. have been in existence for a minimum of one year as of 7 August 2012, (the date of the CRTC decision) and have a membership of a minimum of twenty (20) members; AND 2. An organization must have a mandate to further the interests of a broad-based membership of disabled users through either: a. the provision of services; b. advocacy; or c. academic research; AND 3. An organization must identify one (1) Category of Accessibility Group Stakeholders to which it wishes to belong, whether: a. sight Accessibility Group Stakeholders; b. hearing Accessibility Group Stakeholders; c. mobility Accessibility Group Stakeholders; or d. cognitive Accessibility Group Stakeholders. If your organization meets these three criteria and is interested in becoming an Accessibility Group Stakeholder, your organization will need to sign a Stakeholder Registration Form for the Fund. The purpose of this Registration is to allow the Fund to know who is entitled to elect Directors to the Permanent Board; the Registration does not create any liability or financial obligation on the part of the Stakeholder for the operation of the Fund. The Process for Becoming an Accessibility Group Stakeholder: As the Chair of the Interim Board of Directors of the Fund, I am writing to ask if your organization meets the criteria for an Accessibility Group Stakeholder and is interested in becoming a Stakeholder. If so, please send a brief reply email to info@baf-far.ca indicating your interest and the appropriate contact person and email address for your organization. Alternatively, you may also reply by physical mail to following address: Broadcasting Accessibility Fund 160 Elgin Street P.O. Box 70005 Place Bell PO Ottawa, ON K2P 2M3 Following receipt of your reply, you will be sent a Stakeholder Registration Form to review, sign and return to the Fund. For the purpose of electing the inaugural Permanent Board of Directors, Stakeholder Registration Forms must be received by the Fund no later than 10 May 2013. Shortly after that date, the Interim Board of Directors will finalize the Stakeholder list for voting purposes and run transparent and impartial elections for Directors of the Permanent Board. Our goal is to have an inclusive Permanent Board, elected by a broadly representative body of Stakeholders. I hope your organization will consider whether it meets the above criteria and if so, whether it wishes to become an Accessibility Group Stakeholder. Also, if you are aware of other organizations that may meet the criteria of Accessibility Group Stakeholders and be interested in acting as a Stakeholder, please feel free to either forward this correspondence to them or to email me with their contact information at info@baf-far.ca so that I can invite them directly. I am also attaching a press release, which you can post on your organization’s website, if you wish. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to send them to info@baf-far.ca, or to the post office box indicated above, and a member of the Interim Board will respond. If you are interested in obtaining funding from the Fund, you can send a note of interest to the same address. However, it will likely be several months before the Fund is fully operational with an established funding process and criteria and able to deal with applications. On behalf of the Interim Board, I hope you will consider becoming a Stakeholder and I look forward to hearing from you. Yours truly, [ Original signed by M. Gusella ] Mary Gusella Chair (Interim Board), Broadcasting Accessibility Fund Inc. Attachments 1 See CRTC Broadcasting Decision 2011-163: http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2011/2011-163.htm and Broadcasting Regulatory Policy 2012-430: http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2012/2012-430.htm. 2 See Broadcasting Regulatory Policy 2012-430 http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2012/2012-430.htm, paragraphs 18, 19 and 38. 3 The Interim Board of Directors are: Mary Gusella (Chair), Professor Jutta Treviranus and Bill Abbott.