New infrastructure funding should be tied to accessibility standards
People with disabilities have to fight for basic accessibility every day – and it’s exhausting! I live with a disability that requires me to use crutches to get around. I work as a dance educator with students that have various disabilities. I’ve learned first-hand that ‘accessibility’ is a word that is thrown around plenty but largely ignored in practice. It’s time this changed.
We live in a society with so much abundance of knowledge and experience to create accessible spaces for all, yet we are still so far behind. Accessibility is a basic right, enshrined in the Accessible Canada Act, adopted in 2019 to create a barrier-free Canada and enable the full and equal participation of persons with disability in all aspects of life. Canada also joined the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to protect and promote the rights and dignities of pers with disabilities “without discrimination and on an equal basis with others.”
Yet still I encounter inaccessible spaces almost every day.
Canada should be a leader in accessibility. Our political leaders could help make it happen.
It’s time for our political parties — vying for federal leadership — to put all this accessibility talk into action. Every party has plans for significant infrastructure spending post-pandemic. This must be tied to accessibility standards. There are no longer excuses for spaces that are designed to prevent the full participation of every Canadian — especially not with tax-payer dollars.
Let me give you a recent example. I attended a University sports complex in Montreal, but in order to access the elevator, I needed to go through a locked security entrance that requires a key card (which I don’t have). As an occasional user of this space, a security guard needed to escort me to open the door.
When I was done my session, I had to come back up using the same elevator. But in order to get out of the space between the elevator and the building exit, I needed to wave down a security guard from the other side of the door. I was locked in.
What if there was an emergency and we needed to exit in a hurry? What if the security guard was not available or didn’t see my frantic waving? How would I exit the building?
When I approached the University with my complaint, the immediate response was, “We’ve never had a situation before. And we don’t have many people with disabilities on campus using this space.” Gee, I wonder why.
There are so many more examples. The restaurants with an “accessible bathroom” located on the second floor, and in order to get to it, you needed to leave the restaurant and use an elevator attached to the building.
Then there’s winter, when the snowplows clean the streets but leave huge piles of snow in the handicap parking spaces. Or how about the automatic door buttons that don’t work half the time. The list goes on and on.
A recent Angus Reid poll in partnership with the Rick Hansen Foundation found that 86 per cent of persons with disabilities report having their daily activities impacted by their condition. This is not a surprise to me.
What does come as a pleasant surprise is that four in five Canadians (those living with and without disabilities) believe Canada should implement a harmonized national standard of accessibility. And a whopping 92 per cent of Canadians believe that taxpayer funded infrastructure projects should be held to the highest standards of accessibility. It’s time.
Let’s make sure our political leaders know accessibility is a priority issue for Canadians.
With this upcoming election, no matter what political party wins, I truly hope that we can come together as a society, united in working together to improve conditions for people with disabilities.
Image courtesy of the author
