Is LEADS free to use?
Yes. LEADS is released under a CC BY-NC 4.0 licence and is free for non-commercial use. No consultant, licence fee, or external party is required. You can download the survey template, run it yourself, and score it with the free calculator on this site.
Who should administer LEADS?
It is designed to be run by employees, Employee Resource Groups, or inclusion leaders inside an organization. It does not require an external vendor.
Who answers the questions?
All employees, regardless of disability status. That is deliberate. It allows comparison between the experiences of employees with and without disabilities, and it means nobody has to disclose a disability in order to participate.
How long does the survey take?
About 10 minutes. There are 25 domain items and 10 optional context questions.
Do we have to use all 25 items?
The five-domain structure should be preserved so scores remain comparable, but wording can be adapted to your organization. If you change items substantially, say so when reporting results.
How many responses do we need?
A minimum of 100 responses is recommended for organization-level analysis, 50 for location-level, and 30 for any subgroup. Subgroups below 30 should not be reported separately, to protect anonymity.
Does LEADS collect our data?
No. The score calculator runs entirely in your browser. Nothing is transmitted, stored, or retained by this site. The survey itself is hosted on your own Microsoft Forms tenant, not ours.
What are our privacy obligations?
LEADS collects sensitive information. Administrators are responsible for complying with applicable privacy law, including PIPEDA and provincial legislation in Canada, or equivalent law in other jurisdictions. Use an enterprise platform covered by a Data Processing Agreement, and never collect identifying information.
Can we use LEADS outside Canada and the U.S.?
Yes. The framework is grounded in Canadian and U.S. law, but the domains map onto the UN CRPD and ILO standards. Review the policy references for your own jurisdiction before deploying.
Is LEADS validated?
Not yet. Formal psychometric validation is planned in partnership with Lakehead University following pilot implementations. Known limitations are documented in the framework paper, and results should be read as indicative rather than diagnostic.
Does LEADS replace our existing assessment?
No. It is designed to supplement employer-completed frameworks such as the Disability Equality Index or the ILO GBDN Self-Assessment by adding the employee perspective those tools do not capture.
How do we share our results?
Aggregate findings and feedback are genuinely useful and directly shape future versions. Use the feedback form or email the author. Never send individual-level responses.