Summary

Here is yet more momentum in support of our call for the Ontario Government to develop and enact an Education Accessibility Standard under the AODA. The Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association (OECTA) wrote the Ontario Government on January 7, 2014 to support our call for the Government to create this new accessibility standard. OECTA represents elementary and high school teachers in Ontario’s English Catholic schools. We set out that letter below. We express our deep gratitude to OECTA and all others who support our effort. We invite you to help us press for action.

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The AODA requires the Ontario Government to lead Ontario to become fully accessible to all persons with disabilities no later than 2025. To do this, the Government must develop, enact and effectively enforce all accessibility standards needed to ensure that Ontario reaches that goal on time.

AODA

The five accessibility standards that the Government has enacted to date will not achieve that goal, even if they are fully obeyed and enforced. Making matters worse, last fall we revealed Government records that show that the Government has not kept its promise to effectively enforce the AODA despite ample public funds available for enforcement. Those records also showed that the Government knew last year of massive violations of the first of those standards, the 2007 Customer Service Accessibility Standard, among private sector organizations with at least 20 employees.  For over two and a half years, the AODA Alliance has unsuccessfully pressed the Ontario Government to start developing more accessibility standards. We have asked that the next three accessibility standards to be developed should address barriers in education, health care, and residential housing.

Over one year ago, the Government announced that the revamped Accessibility Standards Advisory Council (ASAC) would be mandated to develop new accessibility standards. However, despite our efforts and unexplained governmental delay, the Government has not given ASAC any new accessibility standards to develop.

As a cruel irony, the Government is taking longer to decide which accessibility standards it will develop next than it takes to actually develop an accessibility standard.

We were delighted last summer when our proposal for an Education Accessibility Standard was publicly endorsed by the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA), the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario (ETFO), and the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation (OSSTF). With the new support of OECTA, we now have Ontario’s university professors, as well as Ontario’s English public and Catholic school teachers collectively supporting our call for an Education Accessibility Standard. This reflects the collective experience of so many who deliver education on the front lines of Ontario’s publicly funded education system.

In the campaign leading up to the five August 1, 2013 Ontario by-elections, we asked all major Ontario political parties to endorse our call for new accessibility standards to now be developed to address barriers facing persons with disabilities in education, health care and residential housing. Last summer, the New Democratic Party gave this commitment. Ontario’s Liberal Party and Progressive Conservative Party did not.

We are seeking similar commitments in the campaign for the two upcoming Ontario by-elections to be held on February 13, 2014. As always, our non-partisan coalition does not endorse, support, or oppose any party or candidate.

To read more of this article and to see how you can be supportive of these issues please go to AODA Alliance.