AODA

Not even an adorable puppy could distract West Perth council from the "stick" behind the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA).

Shelby Wilson, accessibility coordinator for Perth County, combined training a service dog with seeking input from council on proposed AODA regulations
at council's Sept. 27 meeting.

And while the puppy may have warmed hearts, the proposed rules, including hefty fines for individuals and organizations, extra costs and extra requirements,
raised tempers.

A provincial byelection polling station was bounced to a non-accessible site by a volleyball game, disability activists say.

Members of the Accessibility for Ontarians With Disabilities Act Alliance have been trying to find out since February why a Toronto Centre polling station
was moved to a room that could be accessed only by stairs.

According to the National Coalition for Vision Health, the number of visually impaired and blind Canadians will double over the next 25 years. (iStock)”I
have lived a very complex existence,” says Valentina Gal, a novel writer and consultant based in Toronto who says technology is a double-edged sword. On
one hand, it’s essential for her writing. On the other, even the simplest of Google searches can turn into an hours-long marathon surfing session.

That’s because Gal has been blind since birth. And like many visually impaired people, she finds that functioning in the online world is not easy. That’s
despite the fact there are text-to-speech screen readers, Braille printers and other tools to help the cause.

With the uneven implementation of the Customer Care Standard in School Boards, Hospitals and a broad range of community services and the absence of any
meaningful enforcement mechanism, it is more important than ever that your voices be heard.

Just recently we had an incident of inaccessible Voting booths, apparently not an isolated incident. It’s become quite evident that the Disability Community is not being served by the McGuinty Government. Something
has to give and quite frankly it should not be us yet again!

The City of Mississauga’s seventh Accessibility Plan; 2009 Annual Report and 2010 Initiatives was received today at Council.

“Removing barriers to persons with disabilities ensures that all citizens have access to our services,” said Diana Simpson, City accessibility coordinator. 
“Our staff now have the tools to accommodate and better understand customers with disabilities.”

Simpson explained that the City’s focus for 2010 and beyond will be to develop a sustainment plan for delivering accessible customer service, to continue
to implement accessible improvements to Mississauga Transit and to monitor the provincial accessibility standards.

The fallout continues from Elections Ontario’s operating a polling station in the February 4, 2010 by-election that was inaccessible to voters with disabilities,
and its then denying to the media that the polling station was inaccessible.

The Saturday, February 6, 2010 Toronto Sun included a follow-up story, set out below. It quoted the AODA Alliance as criticizing this incident and calling
for new legislation to prevent this from happening again. That story also quoted from the AODA Alliance’s February 5, 2010 update on that incident. You
can urge others to sign up for our updates, since we not only report the news to you, but they also make the news! A shorter version of the same news article
was included in the Saturday, February 6, 2010 Peterborough Examiner.

The February 5, 2010 Toronto Sun reported that a polling station in the February 4, 2010 Toronto provincial by-election was inaccessible to voters with
disabilities. (Making this incident worse, Elections Ontario initially denied that the polling station was inaccessible. See the article below.)

It is shocking, yet unsurprising to us that in 2010, voters with disabilities continue to face such obvious and easily prevented barriers to their constitutional
right to vote.

Just hours after officially declaring his candidacy in the race to be Toronto’s next mayor there was a significant misstep in Adam Giambrone’s campaign.

The 32-year-old TTC Chair held a celebration marking his entry into the mayoral race at popular College Street nightspot Revival. CityNews reporter Tara
Weber, who uses a wheelchair, discovered the event was a bit of a challenge to cover as the venue wasn’t fully accessible.

For most people accessibility brings to mind images of convenient parking spaces, ramp entrances and elevators.

Awareness about the disabled and their ability or inability to access buildings has grown considerably over the past couple of decades and this is directly
reflected in architectural design.

But there's still something most people don't think about --
online accessibility .

On December 31, 2009 CBC Radio1 Ottawa interviewed Minister Meilleur regarding the then soon to become Law Customer Care Standard. I was also interviewd after she spoke, you can listen to the interview or download it.

What I found interesting after listening to it afterwards was Minister Meilleurs’ response when the Host asked about enforcement. It appeared to me that
she was using the Disability Communityes spending power as a reason for Business to implement accessibility and enforcement was secondary.