AODA Alliance
Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance Update
United for a Barrier-Free Ontario for All People with Disabilities
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In His Monthly Column in the Toronto Star’s Metroland Publications, AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky Details the Commitments We’re Seeking from the Four Candidates for Leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party
November 3, 2026
SUMMARY
We encourage you to read AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky’s latest in his monthly column on disability issues that runs in the Toronto Star’s 25 Metroland publications around Ontario. We set it out below. This column describes the commitments that the AODA Alliance has sought from the four candidates who are running for leadership of Ontario’s Liberal Party. The AODA Alliance’s September 2, 2026 letter to the candidates fully explains the commitments we seek.
How You Can Help
- Reach out to the Ontario Liberal leadership candidates. Press them to make the accessibility pledges we seek.
- Urge the media to start to cover the disability issues we are raising in the Ontario Liberal Party leadership race.
- Listen to Episode 5 and Episode 6 of Disability Rights and Wrongs — The David Lepodcast where AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky interviewed the former Liberal leader and the former Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne to get a sense of how a party leader can be persuaded on disability issues.
MORE DETAILS
Durham Region News November 2, 2026
Originally posted at https://www.durhamregion.com/opinion/columnists/liberal-leadership-disability-commitment/article_801c50ce-fcd5-5be4-aeaa-c54c0723a723.html
Disability advocates ask Ontario Liberal leadership candidates for commitments to make province more accessible
Seeking and obtaining such commitments from political leaders is always important, David Lepopfsky writes.
By David Lepofsky
David Lepofsky is the chair of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance.
Ontario’s Liberals are about to choose their next leader, with online voting starting Nov. 9.
In September, I wrote to the candidates running for leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party, asking for specific commitments to lead this province to become accessible for people with disabilities.
The disability advocacy coalition I chair will make public responses we receive on our website.
Our non-partisan grassroots coalition never endorses, supports or opposes any party or candidate. We aim to get strong commitments from all leadership candidates.
In past Liberal leadership races most, if not all, candidates responded to us. In the last two Conservative Party leadership races, no candidate answered us. The last Ontario NDP leadership race was uncontested.
Nearly three million Ontarians with disabilities still face too many barriers when they try to get a job, ride public transit, get an education, use our health-care system, get around in our community, or shop for and enjoy the goods, services and facilities that are available to the public.
Those barriers hurt all Ontarians.
Everyone either has a disability now or is bound to get one later as they age.
In 2005, the legislature unanimously passed the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act. It required the government to lead this province to become accessible to people with disabilities by 2025.
We failed to reach this deadline, due to a series of failures in leadership by successive governments — both Liberal and Conservative.
The Ford government’s record since taking power in 2018 has been abysmal. For Ontarians with disabilities, things have gotten worse and not better under Premier Doug Ford.
We ask the Liberal leadership candidates to commit, if elected, that they would meet and work together with our coalition, make written election commitments in upcoming elections on disability accessibility, never weaken the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act for which we fought so long and hard, and show strong leadership on accessibility as a priority.
If the Liberals form the next government, we also ask each leadership candidate to commit that they will create a comprehensive multi-year action plan to tear down disability barriers in Ontario.
Because our school system is replete with disability barriers harming over 330,000 students with disabilities, we request that they commit to fix this by reforming Ontario’s education system to remove disability barriers facing students with disabilities and improve the funding formula for educating students with disabilities.
We also ask for accessibility standards to tear down disability barriers in our K-12 schools, colleges and universities.
We seek a pledge they won’t use public money to create or perpetuate barriers against people with disabilities.
The current government misuses public money in this way time and again. We want to know if they will tear down disability barriers in the health-care system and in provincial and municipal elections.
We also need the next government to reform the delayed and dysfunctional process for bringing a discrimination claim under the Ontario Human Rights Code.
To ensure these commitments are not just lip service and get translated into action, we ask candidates to agree, if elected, they will direct their cabinet ministers to fulfil these pledges.
Why bother asking for these commitments?
You might be understandably skeptical about politicians’ promises. Don’t they just say what they think you want to hear to get elected?
I’ve found seeking and obtaining such commitments is always important. If we don’t ask, they likely won’t pledge anything on this important topic.
A candidate’s very process of deciding what to say to us on this issue helps activate, mobilize and energize them.
Once they make commitments to us, these can serve as a helpful motivator when we speak to the successful candidate’s team months and years later.
I hope all members of the Ontario Liberal Party will take this issue into account during this leadership race.
We are ready to work with the leaders and members of all Ontario’s political parties now and in the future on the shared, endorsed goal of achieving a fully accessible Ontario.
David Lepofsky is a retired lawyer who chairs the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance and the Toronto District School Boards Special Education Advisory Committee. He is a visiting professor of disability rights at the law schools at Western, Queen’s and the University of Ottawa, and hosts a podcast: Disability Rights and Wrongs – The David Lepodcast.