Important events that impact people with disabilities in the news
Star Editorial Board, March 20, 2023 An interim review of Ontario’s progress in implementing the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) is anything but laudatory. Do you care? When the conclusion of a report begins and ends by asking the premier that question, you know that the rest of the report isn’t likely to…
Rich Donovan, entrepreneur, March 1, 2023 It is the assessment of the 4th Reviewer that leadership on accessibility, and the AODA, has been absent for 17 years. Without leadership, progress on this file is impossible. Without leadership, there can be no accountability. This has certainly been the case with the AODA. Yet this difficulty goes…
Tyler Griffin, The Canadian Press, Global News, March 10, 2023 People with disabilities still consistently face barriers in their everyday experiences, from navigating city streets, to applying for jobs, to accessing public transit and government services, wrote report author Rich Donovan. Donovan, who was appointed by the province in early 2022 to conduct a legislative…
unwanted burden
CBC News, Toronto, February 24,2023 A Toronto woman is speaking out about the experience of flying with a disability, saying her most recent flight with Air Canada left her feeling like an unwanted burden. Georgia Pike, a graduate student at York University, says she has travelled in and out of Toronto Pearson Airport many times,…
The Agenda with Steve Paikin, host of TVO’s flagship current affairs program, February 3, 2023 The Honourable David C. Onley left a lasting impression on those he met as a friend, as an accessibility advocate, and as a former lieutenant-governor of Ontario. Ontario’s former lieutenant governor, David Onley, left the world at the age of…
Lucas Robinson, Wisconsin State Journal, January 24, 2023 Where the likes of Louis Braille and Abraham Nemeth made it possible for the blind to read and perform mathematics, John Boyer took it a step further. Boyer, a Madison resident who was pivotal in the development of STEM reading material for the blind, died on January…
Editorial, Winnipeg Free Press, January 18, 2023 Sometimes, a passing grade is considered a satisfactory result, the product of sufficient preparation and effort to allow for an outcome that qualifies as success even though it may have flirted with failure along the way. In other words, just enough to be good enough. When it comes…
urgentguide dog campaign, it spends 52 cents on fundraising
Bonnie Allen, CBC News, January 18, 2023 CNIB Guide Dogs president says you have to invest money to get money. The Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) began its urgent appeal for donations in late 2020. A charity watchdog says CNIB spends more than half of each dollar raised on fundraising costs, and that…
Jon Hernandez, CBC News, British Columbia, January 6, 2023 Woman alleges City of Maple Ridge has created unsafe walking conditions for people with disabilities. Maria Kovacs won’t risk waiting for the bus near her church on her own anymore. The last time she tried it, a cyclist hit her. When I got out of the…
Kate McCullough, Hamilton Spectator Reporter, June 30, 2022 When a blind disability advocate reached out to Mohawk College to complain they’d cancelled a program that trains students to develop accessible media, he received a response in a format he couldn’t fully read. The irony of the situation was not lost on David Lepofsky, chair of…
