Next steps in campaign to make Ontario disability accessible. What goals? What strategies? David Lepofsky, Chair. Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance. Delivered at the Osgoode Hall Law School, February Fourth, 2014, as a Roy McMurtry clinical fellow. Good afternoon everyone, in this the final lecture in this series of Accessibility Advocacy lectures that I'm giving during my, my, my time at Osgood Hall Law School as the Roy McMurtry clinical fellow, I wanna talk to you about what the immediate next challenges are that Ontario's disability community is facing.

What our priorities are for action, and how you can help. And the ideas I'm gonna share are tied right to the events of today February 4th 2014, but for those who watch this on video sometime in the future, these will be relevant at any time with some tweaking.

I've had the privilege for the past 19 years of working with a wonderful community of people with disabilities. People without disabilities and community organizations, with a single goal in mind. Our dream is to achieve a province of Ontario that is barrier free for all people with a physical or mentor, mental, or sensory, or learning, or intellectual disability.

Let me take just a moment to tell you what the challenges that we faced and where we're at right now. Other lectures in this series go into great detail on how we've come as far as we have, what we've gained, what our tactics have been. And today I wanna focus on what's next and to talk about rolling up your sleeves to get active in this campaign.

But I'm gotta take just a minute to capture where we are and and what the problems are that we've been facing. People with disabilities are a huge group of folks. We're everywhere and we face barriers everywhere we go. The problem is, that even though those barriers are illegal under the under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees equality without discrimination because of disability, and the Ontario Human Rights code, which protects against discrimination because of disability.

Even though they're illegal, too often, they're still remaining in place. And even as we tear down old barriers, new ones too often, are popping up. This led people with disabilities 19 years ago in Ontario to start first as a small group and then to grow into a, a large tenacious coalition to fight for a new law.

The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act and after a ten year's battle, at the grass roots using some of the strategies I'm gonna talk about in just a few minutes. We won that legislation and we won it with all party approval. It requires Ontario to become fully accessible by 2025.

It requires the Ontario government to lead us to that goal. It requires the government to by, to do that by to achieve that by two principal actions. The government has to make accessibility standards to tell organizations what they've got to do to find the barriers they have. To remove them along reasonable time lines and to prevent the creation of new ones.

Now once those standards are enacted, it requires the government to effectively enforce them. The legislation has all the legal bones in it we need. What's the problem? The problem is, nine years have passed since it was enacted. 11 years are left till the deadline for its goals to be achieved, and we are behind schedule.

In another lecture in this series I go through, in detail, why and how we're behind schedule. But from this point, or at this point let me just tell you we are not on schedule. If every organization that has to act under the AODA, does absolutely everything they have to do under the accessibility standards that have been enacted today.

In areas like customer service, employment, transportation, the built environment and information communication. If they honor it to the letter, we will not achieve a fully accessible Ontario by 2025. Indeed, we don't achieve an accessible Ontario ever. Cuz those standards don't go far enough or fast enough or cover enough.

They're helpful. We should be proud of what we've won, but we've got a long way to go, so, any community advocacy organization can't just complain. We've got to come forward with an agenda and we've done that. We've come more forward with a series of priorities for action that we are urging all Ontario political parties to adopt.

Let me just explain them to you and I'm gonna spend the rest of out time together talking about what you can do to help make these priorities a reality. By the way, our aim is to ensure that our priorities can appeal to any party and any politician, whatever be their political strife.

Stripe, pardon me, cuz political strife we have enough of, but whatever be their political stripe. Because we are non partisan. And we want just as the AODA was passed unanimously, we want whatever government is in power to implement it effectively. So we try to appeal to everyone. We also live in the real world where the government has a significant debt and deficit problem.

So we wanna come forward with an agenda that is affordable and that the government can't simply slough off by saying, great idea, but we don't have the dough. Here goes, the first priority, and I'm not necessarily listing these in terms of order of what should be done first, but the first that we put on our list.

Is it the government has to, finally, keep its promise, so, up till now broken promise, to effectively enforce the Disabilities Act. We have learned through our own efforts. Through our own Freedom of Information request that we had to pursue last year. That the Ontario government knows that there is rampant violations of at least one accessibility standard.

One that we know of. And that there that they are not acting effectively to enforce. Even though they got the power and the money to do the enforcing. What am I talking about? First accessibility standard passed in 2007 is the customer service accessibility standard. It requires organisations of the public and private sector to develop an accessibility policy, train their staff on it and have a feed-back mechanism for you or I, if we run in a problem.

They gave the private sector all the way from 2007, till the end of 2012, to take those simple steps. But, the private sector was also, the public sector had to be up to speed by 2010. The private sector, if you were an organization with 20 or more employees, you had an obligation also by the end of 2012.

It's already, it's over a year ago to file a self-report electronically with the government simply reaffirming that you've done what you're supposed to do. What we learned last November through our Freedom of Information application is that fully 70% of Ontario private-sector organizations with 20 or more employees, have not even filed that report.

Well, if they have done that simple act, one's left wondering what else they haven't done under this standard. Moreover, the government's known about this. In fact, the file, the failure to file rate was even higher at the start of 2012, and the government knew about that. We found out also that even though the government has the power to undertake inspections, conduct audits and to issue compliance orders and indeed to give monetary penalties.

They haven't done any of that with the private sector as of last November. None. Rampant violations. No effective enforcement using those tools. Now were they out of money? No we found out that the government branch that was given a budget for implementing the Disabilities Act including enforcement was under budget every year since 2008 and the total under budget, that's money they're given and don't spend.

And by the way government departments aren't notorious for getting budget and not spending them. Living under budget for a total sum over that period, not per year, but total, 24,000,000 bucks. A lot of enforcing could have been going on. So, what have we done? We are calling on all political parties to commit now to the effective enforcement of this Act.

As of now, the minister responsible, the enforcer in chief, Dr. Eric Hoskins, Has on the one hand withheld all of this information till we kept pushing the information request. We're seeking it since last January, January 2013. He is told the legislature last fall, last summer that accessibility is a top priority for a human in this government, and has said that he as of November has a plan for enforcing.

But the only thing he's announced was that they were gonna write compliance demand letters to I think it was 2,500 of the 36,000 non-compliers. And that's only dealing with one of the five standards they've enacted. We've also learned when and we've pointed this out over and over that they, if you encounter a barrier and you wanna let someone in the government know so the branch responsible for forcing this act and the ministry can maybe look at information to decide if they get enough feedback that it's time for an inspect it's time for an audit.

There's no phone number for you to call. And last Friday or probably last Wednesday in The Globe in ma, or pardon me, The Toronto Star on the front page there was a report about a barrier that a woman faced in using public transit in Ontario. We were quoted saying, I was quoted saying, that we don't, we need a phone number to call not that they're gonna send an enforcement person out on every call.

But at least to be able, so they can track and decide when to enforce. And then a spokes person for, for Minister Hoskins basically said well we make standards we don't deal with individual complaints, go to the human rights tribunal and file your own. I'm paraphrasing but that's the thrust of it.

They forgot why they passed this Act, the reason the Disabilities Act was passed, was so that you and I didn't have to go and fight individual barrier, against individual barriers, one human rights complaint at a time. One organization at a time. That's the very reason why the government said it was passing this law.

We have to have the recourse to the Human Rights Tribunal if we need it. But we shouldn't have to rely on that as our main way of enforcing. They promised effective enforcement, so what have we proposed? We've proposed there should be a call in number. We've proposed the government should be loud and clear with the public including the public and private sectors.

That they're going to enforce, we've proposed that they should be actually acting on these cases of non-contravention, or of contravention, and using their audit inspection powers. But recognizing that they have limited resources, we've offered other practical suggestions. The government has a number of inspectors under a number of different laws that inspect.

for, for environmental reasons, for occupational health and safety reasons, there's, for health care reasons, tons of them. We've asked the government to deputize them as Accessibility Act inspectors. Give em a checklist when they go into an organization for any other reason. Let 'em check out the organization's compliance on the DIsabilities Act Two.

All it requires is training and direction to go do it. Not zillions of new inspectors. We've been proposing that for oh, I think over two and a half years, and we're still waiting. But that's our first pri-, the first priority that I'm going to list for you, getting the Disabilities Act effectively enforced.

The second area that we wa-, I wanna turn your attention to, the second area for action that is a huge priority for us, is that we need new accessibility standards. The government had picked five good ones to make first back in 2005, 2006 in the areas of customer service, employment, transportation, built environment, and and information and communications.

But they don't cover the full range of barriers, and under the AODA The government is obliged to make all the standards it needs to make to get us to full accessibility by 2025. We, a couple of years ago, identified the three ones that we want made next. I stuck to three last ones, there could be more after that, but the three ones we want made next, deal with barriers of education, preschool, school, post-secondary school.

No one has looked at our education system top to bottom to root our barriers. There's been some progress, but we won't have a fully accessible education system by 2025 or ever without something new. I'm pleased to inform you that we've got some allies in this cause. Four major organizations on our side.

Publicly, we've got the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario. That's the union that represents public school elementary school teachers. The Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation, they represent the. The public high school teachers. We've got the Ontario English Catholers, Catholic Teachers Association representing elementary and secondary school English Catholic teachers.

And we have the Ontario confederation of university faculty association which speaks the Queen's part. For university professors around the province. So so many of, these organizations who speak for those who deliver education on the front lines, they're not saying, we're doing a great job we don't need to do anymore, students with disabilities they got it there's no problems.

They're saying, no we need more. And so education, being pivotal to everybody, is one of the three we've called for. The second accessibility standard we've called for deals with healthcare. We all need a, a healthcare system we can use. Like our education system, our healthcare system is publicly funded.

And yet while we're paying the money, we're not getting an assurance that people with disabilities could fully and equally use it. This is especially a cruel irony in the case of the health care system cuz if you look at the statistics, who dis proportionally uses the health care system?

When do you use it the most? Well, on average, it's in the, in you senior years when your acquiring disabilities. So a system that is predominantly, or disproportionately there to serve people with disabilities is far from barrier free. What could be done? Again, no one's looked at our healthcare system, even though there's been some progress, nobody's looked at it from top to bottom and said, where are the barriers, who's got it right, where can we replicate good ideas and, and move things forward?

Can you imagine the government using our money to buy diagnostic equipment for a hospital, but not ensuring, not requiring, that it be accessible? That's the world we're in right now. Number three, residential housing. We all need our health, at some point in our life, we all need education, and we all need a place to live.

There is a housing crisis facing people with certain, excuse me, kinds of disabilities. And we don't have, the government recently passed amendments to the building code to deal with accessibility. They only deal with new construction and renovations, and they don't ensure fully accessible housing construction even in new builds.

And, what that means is that while we continue to have a province full of houses and apartments that have barriers in far too many cases. We have no assurance that we're building enough new housing stock that will be accessible. Now, are we proposing that an individual homeowner should be forced by law to renovate there own house even if they don't need accessibility?

No we're not. But what we are suggesting, are a number of ideas, in a residential housing accessability standard could go further beyond these. These are just to give you a, a hint of what we could look to. How about requiring that when a developer goes to their municipality, or wherever, to get approval to develop a bunch of houses or townhouses, that a certain percentage of them be required to be accessible.

Not all of them, but a certain percentage of them. Let's increase our accessible housing stock. How about this, if you or I wanna renovate our house, to make it accessible and put a ramp at the front we should be able to have legal protection that cuts the red tape that you may run into with zoning or other restrictions to enable you to do it.

Let's get the legal barriers out of the way. How bout this? If you own a condo, a condominium in a condominium structure, you shouldn't have to get the approval of the board of directors in order to make an accessibility change in your own or around your own unit.

When you work at a workplace, if you have a disability, you don't have to have a referendum of all your coworkers before your, your boss can give you accessibility supports. It should be no different when you live in a condo. Let's get rid of some of those legal barriers.

Those are just some ideas. If a municipal housing authority is renovating, its own housing stock for public housing. They should be required to increase their stock of housing, of public housing that's accessible. Those are just a few ideas. We've called for these three standards to be made. The government is taking longer to decide which standards next to make than they actually take to develop an entire standard.

A year ago, they set up a new council with a mandate, or a revamped council, with a mandate to make all new accessibility standards They said they were gonna decide which standards to make based on what they've already gathered in terms of information. It's a year later. The clock is ticking, 2025 is approaching.

The third area of priority we were focusing on is this, the government has an important power to make change beyond regulations and enforcement. They've got a lot of public money and a lot of people out there who want their money. The government spends billions every year on capital infrastructure, on buildings and on renova, and in on structures, capital infrastructures on the province not just government buildings, universities come to government saying hey, we want a new building, will you pay for it.

Hospitals, schools, lots of municipalities. There's lots of this out there and every year, we are government's time out there. There's huge infrastructure budget. Similarly the government spends billions every year on buying goods and services. We don't wanna alter that budget but we want the government to attach one string and the string would provide this.

If you want our money you've got to commit that you will not use one dime of it. To either create a new barrier, or perpetuate or exacerbate an existing barrier. Don't use our money to make things worse. The government said they would do something like that in terms of new inf, capital infrastructure couple of years ago.

But we haven't seen the details or the teeth. In procurement, they say they're trying to ramp it up and an accesssibility standard addresses it, but in general, language. We wanna see real action. We wanna see senior cabinet ministers out there saying this. You want our money? Show us your plans to make sure you don't use our money to make things worse.

Let me give you an illustration that will hit home in Toronto. This is 2014 and the the summer of 2015, Toronto will be hosting the 2015 Pan and Parapan American Games. The public, including the Government, is spending a lot of money on these games. We've called on the government to insure that there is a strong accessibility legacy.

It's not just a question of making sure that, that the housing or the athletes will live will be accessible. That the stadiums where they will perform or compete will be accessible We want a legacy of accessibility, the government had a press conference in the, in August of 2013, big ballyhoo, all sorts of performing and so on, to announce the legacy of the games.

This is why you, the taxpayers should be happy we're spending millions of your dollars on this games, here's whats gonna be benefit for until to be left behind when the games are over. Nothing about disability accessibility. Zero. And we, if you follow us on Twitter, at AODA alliance, you will find out, that there is, that we've been raising this time and again.

Now now they're starting to dribble out little bits of information but nothing comprehensive, nothing good enough. And we've told the government in no uncertain terms 2015 is halfway between 2005 when the Disabilities Act was passed and 2025 when we have to reach full accessibility. At present, TRANA will not be halfway to full accessibility in 2015.

There are two options before the government. Plan for accessibility at the accessibility legacy now so when the world comes to Toronto, they see a city that is well on the way. It's on schedule or even ahead of schedule, or have them come to Toronto and see what we experience now, too few restaurants that we can get into if we have a mobility disability, a TTC where you can't count on the escalators or the subway or the, or the elevators to work reliably, Limited amount of places to stay that are accessible and lots of other barriers like that.

We want the government to in, to focus on infrastructure and on service and facility accessibility. And for example, the government should make it clear that they will not allow any public events to be held on any premises that is not fully customer service and built environment accessible, and tell the, the private sector that now so they can get ready.

The government should also be telling the thousands of employees that work and volunteers who will be involved with the game, encouraging them not to frequent non-accessible places. Let's let our money talk. It's good for our economy. The more restaurants and hotels and other tourist destinations that make themselves accessible, the more access to the tourist dollar they get.

There are a billion people with disabilities around the world. Let's make our community a place they wanna come to. So, that's our third priority. That's not all. Our fourth priority is accessible elections. Voters with disabilities face too many barriers when either trying to get into a polling station, in terms of physical access barriers.

Or being able to mark their ballot independently and verify their choice independently and in private. As a blind person, I can't go to any polling station that I near and being able to mark my own ballot alone. I have to have someone help me. The government bought fancy, accessible voting equipment but it's not available election day only advance polls.

And only in one or two locations per writing, and some writings are pretty huge. We have a solution. We're proposing that the government make available telephone and internet voting. Won't be the solution for everybody, but it will help lots of people. We also don't think it should be limited The voters with disabilities.

We think it would be something that everybody would like. 44 Ontario municipalities already use web or phone voting or both. City of Toronto right now is considering it as well. Ontario lagging way behind. We fought for amendments to our elections act, in 2010, we got weak Amendments that lead elections Ontario study and test pilot it.

Elections Ontarians took a leisurely 3 years to study at and recommended get this. More study, more over elections Ontario said the power test piloted in a bi-elections for two years and they've refused to do so even though we've had several by-elections including one coming up. We want the legislature to intervene, if it's good enough for 44 municipalities around Ontario, it's good enough for all provincial votes.

We want it to be safe and secure but right now elections Ontario and the legislature will tolerate us having mail in ballots. Which have the wonderful security of Canada post. Or the security of your counter at home. If a mail in ballot happens to be sitting there, and someone decides to grab it, mark it and mail it in, before you notice it's missing.

So don't apply a double standard to us on security. when, when mail in ballots have been considered tolerable for a number of, of years now. So, is that all? There are other priorities. I'm just gonna mention one more, though we've got several on our website. But there's one more that should be just so easy.

You've often heard that we need to raise awareness. I'm not big into that as a solution. We need laws that'll solve our problems, but there are a few areas where targeted, and I, and, listen, public education on accessibility is always great, and it can always help. But we wanna target two particular audiences.

And the current Ontario government the conservatives promised they would at least that they would try to make progress on this in 2007. Its been seven years and we're still waiting. Number one school kids. We'd like to have a mandatory curriculum in school on accessibility. Lets get them while they're young.

Get them on our side to understand the importance of this, so when the next generation grows up, they don't make the same mistake that all previous generations have. And the other important audience are key professionals. We think that before you can get a license to be an architect, you should at least be required to learn how to design a building that everyone can use.

Same for lawyers. In terms of knowing about accessible services, same for doctors, social workers, and a wide range of other professionals. The government doesn't set their education standards, but can advocate, excuse me, to organization, self governing professional bodies, that they include this in their curriculum. The government said they would in 2007.

We are still waiting. 2025 is getting closer and closer. And we've, we're run, we've run out of time to get this going. It's time for action now. Now, if you look at everything I've just talked about, enforcement, they've got more budget than they spend. New standards, that's part of the role of the government.

And they've set up a body to create them. Moreover a healthcare and an education standard we say should be designed, we acknowledge will be designed based on the existing healthcare and education budgets. We just want them spent smarter. Getting people teaching this in schools, well folks think about it.

We already have the schools. Let's get the curriculum tweaked. We think that students and teachers will like it. Architects learning how to design a building that's accessible. Any architect student doesn't like the idea maybe they should find another profession.
>> [LAUGH]
>> But in any event, I don't know that any of them won't like it.

I think they would. Having delivered training on accessibility to law students, lawyers, and judges, I find the audiences receptive. We just have to mandate it so we make sure we get it to everyone. Well then, so we've got a pretty tough agenda of things to do. Tough not in the sense that they're tough things to do but they're important things that aren't being done What do we do about it?

Let's spend the rest of our time talking about that. The most important message I can offer you is this, our success on this depends, oh, does this sound like a guilt trip, on you. How do I know that? Because our coalition and it's predecessor have been waging in the accessibility campaign for 19 years.

From 1994 to 2005, the, our predecessor, the Ontarions With Disabilities Act Committee, fought across the province at the grassroots to get this legislation passed. Its successor coalition, the AODA Alliance, which I also chair, the ODA committee having wound up It's been waging a nine year campaign to get the law effectively implemented.

We've made enormous progress, getting the law passed and unanimously is in retrospect, something of which we should all be very proud. And while we're behind schedule for implementation, we've got more attention on an action on accessibility in Ontario right now. Then we would have had without it and that we've ever had before.

But the key to it has been folks just like you. Individuals, young, old, really young, really old and all point in between. People who don't know anything about community organizing. People who don't know anything about law. People who've never gotten on a telev on a TV or radio program before.

People who may never have written a newspaper column before. People who've never possibly talked to a politician before, but who decided to get active. Our biggest barrier to success are people who think there's nothing I can do and there's no point in trying. I'm proud that the coalition that I served and it's predecessor has spent a lot of time, a lot of effort and had a lot of suc, success.

In disabusing people of that sense, of that feeling. You might initially think that you need a law degree, and all these years of training, and speaking, and public advocacy and, and, and, and all these to, to be able to do this, but frankly, frankly, the most effective people who get the message across are John Q.

Public or Joan Q. Public with or without a disability. If you got a disability, you're talking about your own experience, if you don't have a disability, you're gonna get one later. It happens to all of us. So you have the same interest we do in winning this battle.

I've been, the legislature seat a number of bills go through the legislature. And sometimes they hold what are called public hearings where they invite members of the public to come in and make formal speeches, presentations, what's good or bad about the bill, what should be changed. Now you might think that politicians give a preference to hearing and are most interested in hearing from well oiled organizations with glossy briefs who have slick and detailed presentations.

The reality is the reverse. If you ever wanna watch politicians really sit forward and listen watch what happens when it's a mom or a dad or a grandma or a grandpa of a kid with a disability who just comes in and says, let me tell you about the barriers facing my child or my grandchild.

When it's a woman with a disability who talks about getting parking tickets when she parks in an accessible spot. Trying to fight against parking tickets she got, when she parked in accessible spots. And she has a disability permit on her vehicle. I gotta tell you, that's what they remember.

The real life, real human experiences. So what do you do? You have several avenues. Let me tell you the avenues and offer some specific suggestions. The avenues that we have right now are, number one, elections. As I'm speaking, there is a bi-elec, two bi-elections in Ontario in the Thorn Hill and Niagara Falls writing taking place on February 13th, 2014.

Even if you don't live in those writings, their one tweet, one phone call, one fax, or one drive away for many people to get involved. More about what to do in a minute. We're expecting there's a real possibility though it's certainly not a certainty is Spring election and if there isn't they'll be one sometime after that.

Using the tips that I'm gonna talk about in the bi-election equally apply in full elections. Between elections, and whether or not there's an election, you've always got access to your member of the Ontario legislature. And that is an avenue that we have used across the province, regardless of party.

We are nonpartisan. We don't try to elect or defeat anyone. You vote however you want, it's not our business. But it's worth visiting Politicians and candidates, whatever be their party. There are two other avenues for input this spring. Under the Disabilities Act, the government is required every few years to appoint an independent person to see how we're doing under the act, whether we're on schedule, and what needs to change.

The most recent independent review was appointed last summer, about 102 days after they were legally obliged to be appointed. The reviewer appointed is a fabulous choice, Dean Mayo Moran, M-A-Y-O, Moran, M-O-R-A-N. She's the Dean of Law at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law. She's inviting public input, she's gonna hold public consultations.

Let her know what you think. And you don't have to be with an organization, you can be an individual. The final avenue for input is this. Right now even though the government isn't developing any new standards, they have, they are required to have the 2007, customer service standard, accessibility standard, reviewed the body that is reviewing it is called the Accessibility Standards Advisory Council, ASAC, and it will be inviting public input later this spring.

So, those are the avenues, by election, upcoming general election, reaching out to members of the legislature. Whether or not there's an election, the Mayo Moran Independent Review, the Customer Service Standard Review. So what do you do? Let me give you some, now we turn to the, what you personally can do using, to travel in one or more of those avenues.

Anything you can do from this list helps. First things first, we strongly invite you, encourage you to sign up for AODA Alliance email updates. For anybody watching on video, you send a request. All you have to say in the subject line is, sign me up, and you email it to this email address aodafeedback@gmail.com.

aodafeedback@gmail.com. We send emails once, sometimes twice, maybe on occasions three times a week, sometimes not at all during the week to let you know what we're upto, what are the new issues, seeking your feedback. Inviting your input, never seeking your money by the way. And also offering you action tips.

More about that in a minute. So follow, get our, sign up for our email updates. We have people following us from all over the world. And share them with your friends, forward them to your friends. Post them on your Facebook page. Cut and paste from them, use them as you wish, spread the word.

That's how we won the Disabilities Act, was through that kind of activity. Next, follow us on twitter, two twitter handles, for the alliance, it's @aodaalliance, for me personally @davidlepofsky, L-E-P-O-F-S-K-Y. We also, our tweets go out on our Facebook page, would you please, we invite you to like our Facebook page and share our posts with as many people as you can, there's a long name, Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance.

Need a shorter name. But just by signing up, retweeting, sharing our posts, forwarding our email updates to friends, organizations you're involved in, family, politicians, and the media, that alone really helps. What can you do specifically in the bi-election or in an upcoming election? We distribute on our email and on our website, by the way all our posts end up on our website it's www.aodaalliance.org, aodaalliance.org.

What we do when major events like a bi-election or an election comes, we put up an action kit. And in a few pages, it tells you everything you need to know. What are the issues, what actions do we propose you to take. Now, of course, you're welcome to take whatever issues you want public, We don't cover' em, go add to them.

That's the joy of democracy in community organizing. Let's us know what you're up to in case something we didn't think of that might really be cool to add. For example, we have an election action kit out for the byelection. We identify five questions to ask politicians. Drawn from that list of priorities I reviewed, it is easy to cut and paste them into an email and send them to the candidates.

We encourage you to do that. It's also easy to phone a candidate's office, ask for a campaign worker they will perhaps not know anything about this issue. And ask them the questions, they may say I gotta get back to you on it, but offer to send them the action kit, and connect them up with our website cuz there are more resources available.

We've had people do this, they've gone to candidate after candidate, to campaign office after campaign office. If you can go to more than one, that's great. If you can only go to one, that's way better than going to nine. Use social media to spread the word. I've talked about it but I really wanna amplify it.

Social media is a free and effective way to reach more and more people. Grab our posts or our tweets and share them around, add your own comments, send your own. The more activity on in this area, the better. The hash tags, if you're a twitter junkie in this area or /=/accessibility or /=/aldawork.

So then, what else can you do? Well, we need the media, we need media coverage, you might think I can't go get media coverage, I don't, you know, I'm just an individual. Well, there is a lot you can do, see the media, as I've said often during these elections, these, these lectures, the media doesn't cover issues, they cover events.

If you call up a good news organization say, breaking news, people with disabilities face barriers in Ontario, you'll lose them. But on the other hand, when some parents of kids with autism, who have a problem with their school board, raise it with the media, it became a big story, a couple days ago in the Toronto Star.

Their children with autism benefit substantially from a service dog that helps calm and focus them so that they can take part in activities like schooling. They wanted to take their dogs to school, their, their service dog to school. School boards had to wrestle with how to accommodate and the Toronto star article reported that some got a welcoming reception and they worked it out, others had took a year and a lot of hoops to go through without an effective resolution.

And the Toronto star article provided a platform for us, so then we didn't take the story, the story came from these individuals. But then it let us, when we were approached to say, this shows why we need an education accessibility standard. Each school board shouldn't be reinventing this wheel.

Each parent shouldn't have to fight this battle alone. Now, to get those stories in the press, we need you. We need individuals who face barriers, individuals of friends facing barriers, individuals of witness bearers, even if they don't hurt them but they think it's wrong for them to be there, to take those stories to the press.

The media focuses on individual incidents and that becomes a platform to address the broader issue. It's great during an election to bring these up at all candidates debates, but it's great to just call up the assignment desk at a radio or TV or news station, or a newspaper, to raise these.

Well you might find out that the media sometimes doesn't pick up your story. That's not the end of it. Cause the beauty of the world we now live in, is that there are avenues for you to get to the public through various forms of media. Without having to, without being able to bypass the assignment desk in some news organization.

How do you do that? One great way is call in radio, call into radio stations, talk radio, that's all people do is talk. They call in so phone in and tell them about a barrier you face. And even encourage them to do a, a show or a half an hour on that topic.

That's easy, it's free and it's readily available. Another opportunity, if it's a newspaper that hasn't been covering your story that you wanna take them to, letters to the editor. Or, call up and ask about writing a guest column. We've had our supporters around the province write guest columns over the year.

And I'm not talking about people who graduated with degrees in, in journalism. I'm talking about people who've got no training in this at all, just tell your story, talk about what's wrong. Borrow liberally from AODA Alliance materials and we don't need any credit, we will never complain that people used our stuff.

We will be delighted, I'm happiest when we're not attributed. If we say it well and you like to use it, don't worry, we're delighted. Hey if you wanna change the wording around, that's good too but we're, we encourage you to use our material on our website or our email updates.

These are all ways that you can spread the word. Let me conclude with a couple of thoughts. There are, are more and more strategies on our website, but these are just a few examples. If you're going to a politician, tell 'em individual stories about barriers and then present them with the issues that we've got.

If you're going in the media, tell them about the barriers that you face or that you know someone faces. And then, talk about the broader issue about no enforcement of the EDODA or about meeting new accessibility standards. Don't make it all bad news of course. If there's good news about a barrier you managed to overcome at one University bring it to the media in order or put it out on twitter on a blog so you can say hey folks here's a solution that works if only we had an education accessibility standard, we could use this across the province.

Turn your successes into an advocacy effort, not just not just the bad news. The important bad news but the bad news of more and more barriers. So, let me conclude, let me conclude this way, this to the average individual seems uh,can often seem way more then they're ready to deal with.

They're busy, they're tired, they face too much. They're busy in school or at work or with family, and they got a million things to do. Another thing to do is just one more, and it can't be done. And, as I said earlier, a sense that, what difference can I make?

Well I wanna tell you that when we started in as 20 people meeting in a room at Queen's park in 1994. When we started the, the grass roots movement that grew into the, the Disability Act Advocacy Initiative that we are today. None of us had any expectation we'd succeed.

And, anybody looking on would say, there's just no hope. You'll never unite the disability community, you'll never get anyone to listen. And, somebody looking that cynically at us, frankly, would be right. It was totally impractical if not impossible. Once we formed. And when we got to the spring of 1995, as a tiny little coalition, it would be reasonable.

And some thought we could never get a commitment from a political party on our agenda. We got commitments from two of the parties in 95, well in the 95 election. And every election since, at least two parties have made commitments to us, sometimes three. After the election in 1995 Mike Harris the conservative pre, premiere was elected.

He promised the Disability Act but at a dis, an anti regulation agenda and people thought there's no way you'll ever get a law out of him. It took years, the law he passed was inadequate, but in 2001 the Ontarians with Disabilities Act 2001was passed. When it was passed, it being way less than we needed, some people looking on would've said or did say, the disability community is gonna give up.

They held together for, for six years, they got a very weak law, they're gonna move on to other things. Anyone who thought that turned out to be wrong our community stayed together. We got commitments in 2003 election for a stronger Disability Act. Some people thought after the 2003 election maybe promise good act but they won't deliver good act.

And after the years with the prior government and people being cynical about politicians, they could understand why they'd feel that way. But guess what? We kept it up. Grassroots advocates kept it up. Individuals, moms and dads and kids, kept it up. And in 2005, we got all Parties' support for a law that included the key or, key ingredients, I should say, that we wanted.

So, where are we now? On the one hand we've got a series of standards that help but rampant non-compliance under one standard and we don't know, we heard about the others but what is left to worry inatyard wait a little on the enforcement and delay by government in coming up with the next accessibility standard.

So there is every reason to be as pessimistic, as the people were in 94, or I should say as some people were in 94 or 95 or all the way up to 2001 or in 2003. But guess what? Those of us who were optimists, those of us who ignored all the good reasons to be pessimists and he picked up that phone to call a politician, or went to visit a campaign office, or wrote a column for a newspaper, or tweeted, or posted on Facebook, or whatever, those people just kept it up.

And they won each of those rounds and I believe if we keep it up we will won, win this round. Let me conclude with an entire an analogy that all my environmentalist friends hate. We had a big huge tree beside us here, a big huge strapping tall tree, and I told you, you know, knock that tree down.

You'd walk over, and you'd put your hands and push, and you go it's impossible. If I handed you an ax and said okay now chop it down if you took one big, huge swing, you'd make a little dent. But we all know that a person can cut a tree down, if you swing that axe enough times, hard enough, properly aimed, you could chop that tree down.

If we get two people and two axes, they swing it the wrong way, they're gonna hurt each other. But if they swing it the right way and work together, they'll cut down the tree in half the time. Every one of you, every one of you who retweets a tweet, that's a swing of the axe.

Every one of you who decides to post something on Facebook to your friends about issues regarding accessibility, that's a swing of the axe. Every one of you that signs up for our email updates and then forwards them to your family and friends and maybe some politicians or journalists, that's the swing of the axe.

Every one of you who calls a call-in radio station, that counts as about five or six swings of the axe. Every one of you who goes to an all candidates debate, and gets up and raises this from the floor. These issues, from our action kinda or your own issues, yet more swings of the axe.

And we know, just as you can be as confident as can be, that the impossible task of knocking down that tree, is possible by enough well coordinated swings of the axe. We know that by these efforts, we can get this law effectively enforced and we can get to our goal of full accessibility.

Thank you very much for coming and I appreciate you taking the time to, to think about taking action on this important agenda.