The National Network of Equitable Library Service is honoured to announce the release of the Executive Summary & Calls for Justice from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Final Report. Over 40,000 words and 30+ images were carefully formatted and described by NNELS’ accessibility testers, and it is now available for free and open download in e-text and EPUB 3 formats.

Accessible, English versions of the Executive Summary and Calls for Justice can be found by visiting the record in the repository: Reclaiming power and place : executive summary of the final report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. The reports are also available in PDF format from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

“It is important for all people in Canada to recognize the root causes and ongoing systemic violence against Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA peoples. Enabling greater and more equitable access to the Report will enable all peoples in Canada to work toward change and bring about a more just society. The CFLA Indigenous Matters Committee urges all libraries and information centres in Canada to make this version of the Report available to their communities.”
- Stacy Allison-Cassin, Chair of the CFLA-FCAB Indigenous Matters Committee, (CFLA-FCAB, June 5 press release)

This document was entirely produced by people with print disabilities, precisely the audience that needs this information in an accessible format.

 “It is exciting and empowering to know that thanks to the hard work of the accessibility testing team, anyone with a print disability can now read this report, in any way they need, and with the technology they rely on.”
-Daniella Levy-Pinto, Accessible Publishing Coordinator, National Network for Equitable Library Service

We at NNELS hope our efforts enable more people to learn from the truths of those who contributed to the report, participate in the conversations around Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, and understand what steps they can take to help work toward justice.

We also hope our work honours the thousands of people whose truths formed and informed this report.

Our thanks to:

The NNELS accessibility testers for spending dozens of hours editing documents, writing image descriptions, and troubleshooting errors. In the process, the team created digital tools to help identify those images that required descriptions, wrote and added alternative text to images to make their content accessible, created macros and scripts to assist with editing and remediation, and proofread and reworked the format. Their efforts not only resulted in fully accessible versions of the document, but also produced tools that NNELS will be able to use for future work. 

The authors of Reclaiming Power and Place: The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, for trusting NNELS to publish this work in accessible formats.

The Indigenous Matters Committee of the Canadian Federation of Library Associations, for supporting the format-shifting of the Executive Summary and Calls for Justice from Reclaiming Power and Place.

This project was made possible thanks in part to support from the Government of Canada’s Social Development and Partnership Program – Disability Component (SDPP-D).