The right to physical access

25 years ago, two young university students up in Ste Boniface Manitoba decided to start a company to make restaurant experiences more accessible for people with visual impairments. I was one of those guys and the other was my roommate at the time, Alain Mulaire. We thought that we could enhance our little corner of the world… and we did, for a time. Over a period of 2 years, we produced Braille and large print menus for local restaurants and a few chains even. Oddly enough, even though there wasn’t any accessibility legislation to speak of at the time, most restaurant owners liked the idea and were willing to get a couple of accessible menus from us. But not everyone was on board. This one particular individual who owned a restaurant in Ste Boniface aimed for a higher-class clientele, when we approached him with our services, he said the following: “Why would I need specialized menus for blind people? It’s not the kind of restaurant they would frequent anyway.” Of course, I had a few choice words for him, which I kept to myself, but it’s this sort of underlying archaic attitudes that make accessibility such a battle sometimes.

Fast-forward to today. How are we fairing from an accessibility point of view? Well, most provinces now have accessibility legislation. Furthermore, the Government of Canada has adopted Bill C-81, the Accessible Canada Act: An Act to Ensure a Barrier-free Canada. Here in Ontario, we’ve had The Accessibility for Ontarion’s with disabilities act (AODA) since 2005. Having said all that, have things improved?  Incredibly slowly. Although we have legislation that states things ought to be or should be accessible, there is no real consequence when things are found inaccessible. I guess you could do a human rights complaint, but that takes time. There are financial penalties that can be applied, but these fines certainly are not being enforced, unless the application of these aforementioned fines is not being publicized; which is unfortunate. Businesses and organizations are excluding a huge audience for their services and products. It’s imperative that they understand there is a consequence for inaction.

I currently find myself working in the digital accessibility realm of things. So, I see issues that come up in web pages, electronic documents, smart phone apps and desktop applications. I can say there have been advancements when it comes to access technology support, but there’s always room for improvement. Okay, there’s room for a lot of improvement, but I’ve been involved with many companies who are indeed doing the right thing and making their services and products more accessible. 

But as life would have it, my attention has been drawn to accessibility of a different kind; physical barriers within the built environment.  I mean, I understood conceptually  the issue of physical barriers, but when these said obstacles impact your life? Well, it does really hit home. You see, my wife recently was prescribed a motorized wheelchair. We were ecstatic of the perceived freedom this chair was going to give us, as due to her health condition, long distance walking was not an option. This would enable us to increase her mobility and distance. But I guess we forgot where we lived. Toronto is the city of stairs. They’re everywhere. Even ground level businesses may have a 6-inch step at the door and that is an unsurmountable issue for most wheelchair users. We’ve seen companies that have a ramp that goes up to stairs… because that’s accessible? But anyway, bandaid efforts such as Stop Gap is commendable, but it only works if the business remembers to put out the temporary ramp every day. We went to a restaurant on the Danforth which boasted as being wheelchair accessible, only to find out that they couldn’t find their Stop Gap ramp, so we had to forgo our wings that night because we couldn’t get in. I’d like to see more permanent ramps for these 6-inch barriers and have some way of enforcing all businesses to have them. It’s disheartening to wander down the Danforth (no, I’m not picking on you Danforth), and having my wife rhyme off all the businesses that she can’t access because of a 6-inch barrier.

Other examples of physical barriers include elevators. Our subway transit system has a lot of them and as with any machine, they need to be serviced frequently. My biggest beef with the transit setup of elevators is there is no redundancy built into the system. In other words, if an elevator is out of service, then it creates an accessibility barrier, as there is only one elevator. There should at least be a pair of elevators in each location, so if one goes out of service, you still can reach your destination.

Recently, an elevator at a subway that we frequently use was being retrofitted and took over 6 months to complete. You can see the story here:

‘It’s the dangerous route’: TTC user says ‘out of service’ elevator puts her at risk

At any rate, the one thing I’ve learned from having a wheelchair introduced into our lives is that being spontaneous is no longer an option. If we plan an excursion, we need to verify that there is an accessible subway station close by and the elevators are in service. WE need to make sure the business/businesses that we might visit are wheelchair accessible. Mind you, we did manage to go to Niagara Falls last year. Getting there was an experience in itself; a story for another time. But, I was impressed in the level of accessibility in the built environment there.

So, stairs and elevators are just a couple of physical barrier examples, but they do accurately portray the issues that people with disabilities face in their every day lives.  For further reading on built environments and what is being done, visit Thea Curdie’s article entitled: Top insider secrets about what's stopping full inclusion in design & how you can help fix them.