Difference Maker of the Year, Yasmin Atwal, Is Making Schools More Accessible for Everyone
Yasmin Atwal noticed that her school had barriers for students with disabilities. She had already been aware of barriers in the built environment from her lived experience with two cousins who have disabilities. It was the recognition of barriers and her personal experience that made her want to take action.
Yasmin developed a National Accessible Schools Initiative and Toolkit that seeks to address the barriers that youth and children face in their schools and communities. Yasmin recognized that barriers can affect more than school performance, including mental health or access to leadership opportunities, and more.
Yasmin received the Rick Hansen Foundation School Program (RHFSP) Difference Maker of the Year Award in 2026 for her work on this toolkit.
The RHFSP Difference Maker of the Year Award celebrates youth ages 5-18 whose accessibility projects go above and beyond to make their schools and communities more inclusive by creating more awareness and removing barriers for people with disabilities.
"I wanted to create something practical that schools could actually use," Yasmin said. " My goal was to help educators, administrators, students, and school communities better understand accessibility and take real steps toward creating more inclusive learning environments."
Starting the Journey and Building a Toolkit
Knowing where to begin in building a toolkit of this scale is no easy task, but Yasmin was up for the challenge.
"I began by researching disability rights, accessibility standards, inclusive education, and the barriers that students with disabilities face in schools. I looked at legal principles, human rights frameworks, and practical school-based strategies," Yasmin noted. "I also listened to people with lived experience, families, educators, advocates, and community members to better understand what was missing and what schools needed most."
This effort produced a lot of information to then sift through and organize effectively into a toolkit that could be used.
"I wanted it to include actionable recommendations, not just general ideas. I developed sections on accessibility, inclusive communication, disability awareness, classroom practices, student belonging, and school-wide culture," Yasmin explained.
Sharing the Toolkit and Seeing Its Impact
After completing the toolkit, Yasmin shared it with over 15,000 schools across Canada. She has continued to build on it as well, through a free online course that she created, advocacy presentations, and working with the National Disability Advisory Council.
She has since been able to see the impact of her work across Canada and speak about the project.
"I was also happy to see that people were taking the work seriously and recognizing that youth can contribute meaningfully to policy, education, and systems change. Being able to speak about this work at the United Nations and other international platforms showed me that accessibility is a global issue, but it also starts locally in classrooms, hallways, school meetings, and everyday interactions," she said. "Most of all, I was happy that the project created a starting point for conversations that many schools need to have."
Building an Advocacy Platform
Building this toolkit has given Yasmin the opportunity to get deeply involved in the disability community, something she intends to continue to develop going forward including using her YouTube channel and participate in speaking engagements both nationally and internationally.
"I want to keep building tools that schools, students, and communities can use. My goal is to help make accessibility something that is not treated as optional or extra, but as a normal and necessary part of every environment." She explained. " Accessibility is not only about buildings or technology. It is also about whether a student feels welcome in a classroom, whether information is available in a format someone can understand, whether people are listened to, and whether systems are designed with everyone in mind from the beginning."
Learn more about the RHFSP Difference Maker of the Year awards and recipients on our website.
