AODA Alliance
Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance Update
United for a Barrier-Free Ontario for All People with Disabilities
Website: www.aodaalliance.org
Email: aodafeedback@gmail.com
Twitter: @aodaalliance
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/aodaalliance
2026 Begins With an Excellent Globe and Mail Report on the Ford Government’s Failure to Live Up to Its Duties under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act
January 10, 2026
SUMMARY
With New Year festivities now behind us, we’re back in action in the campaign for accessibility for people with disabilities! Our campaign’s new year begins with a fantastic report in today’s Globe and Mail by veteran Queen’s Park reporter Jeff Gray, which we set out below. The Globe describes how Ontario’s Ford Government still has no plan of action over one year after it failed to fulfil its duty under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act to lead Ontario to become accessible to at least 2.9 million Ontarians with disabilities.
Here are reflections on the article.
The article reports as following referring to a statement by a Ford Government representative:
“Mr. Varsava said the proposed AODA standards on health care and education had “led to improvements,” including renovations to schools and hospitals and $55-million in grants this year to support postsecondary students with disabilities.”
In fact, the Ford Government has never enacted either a Health Care Accessibility Standard or an Education Accessibility Standard under the AODA. The Government has sat on the final reports of the Government-appointed Health Care Standards Development Committee, the K-12 Education Standards Development Committee and the Post-Secondary Education Standards Development Committee for upwards of four years, without enacting any of their expert recommendations.
The report refers to the fact that two years ago, the 4th Government-appointed Independent Review of the AODA, conducted by Mr. Rich Donovan, recommended among other things that the Ontario Government should somehow assign the Federal Government with responsibility over accessibility in private sector organizations. As the December 18, 2023 AODA Alliance news release explains, that proposal is very bad policy and would also be unconstitutional.
The article quotes Mr. Donovan as very critical of the AODA’s process for developing enforceable accessibility standards, stating:
“However, Mr. Donovan is also critical of the AODA process. He said its standards are drawn up after a collective-bargaining-like negotiation between disability advocates and industry stakeholders, resulting in rules that are too often divorced from the day-to-day needs of people with disabilities.”
We most profoundly disagree. The problem with existing accessibility standards is that the Government has failed to enact many of the recommendations that Government-appointed expert Standards Development Committees recommended. Having an equal voice at the table for the regulated industry or economic sector on the one hand and the disability community on the other is a very good if not unprecedented practice in Ontario under the AODA.
It is rather ironic that Mr. Donovan is so critical of the standards development process. He himself chaired the Government-appointed Information and Communication Standards Development Committee several years ago. His Standards Development Committee’s final report was very good, and far better than those produced by some other Standards Development Committees such as those addressing employment, customer service or transportation.
The report refers to an AODA Alliance online video that shows how public money has been used to build a terrible bike path on top of a midtown Toronto sidewalk which endangers pedestrians with disabilities – a design which has been used again since that video was made public.
We congratulate the Globe for covering this issue in this article. It would be great if the Globe continued to report on it. Why not ask Premier Ford why he won’t agree to meet with any AODA Alliance representatives.
How You Can Help
Send a letter to the editor of the Globe and Mail at letters@globeandmail.com and applaud this report. Urge the Globe to give more coverage to disability accessibility barriers and the Ford Government’s failure to live up to its duties under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act. Keep your letter to 300 words or less, and insert the article’s headline into your letter:
“Ontario’s promise to people with disabilities left unfulfilled after more than 20 years”
Include your name, snail mail address, phone number and email address in your letter to the editor. Let us know if it gets published.
Encourage friends, family and total strangers to listen to the AODA Alliance’s podcast: Disability Rights and Wrongs — The David Lepodcast. It is available wherever you get your podcasts.
MORE DETAILS
Globe and Mail January 10, 2026
Originally posted at https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ontario-accessibility-disabilities-policy-legislation-aoda/
Ontario’s promise to people with disabilities left unfulfilled after more than 20 years
Jeff Gray Queen’s Park Reporter
Toronto
David Lepofsky in Toronto in December, 2025. Mr. Lepofsky is blind, a lawyer, and has fought for disability rights for decades.
Nearly 21 years ago, MPPs across all parties at Queen’s Park pledged to make Ontario completely accessible to people with disabilities by the beginning of 2025. But with that date now well past, advocates say the process has been a failure and that there is no sign the current government intends to change course.
A full calendar year has now passed since the Jan. 1, 2025, deadline embedded in the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA), which was passed unanimously under the then-Liberal provincial government of premier Dalton McGuinty in 2005.
The act influenced similar legislation across the country. It obligated the provincial government to strike committees made up of people with disabilities and representatives of different sectors of the economy, in order to draft new accessibility standards for “goods, services, facilities, accommodation, employment, buildings, structures and premises.” And it gave Ontario 20 years to adopt and enforce them.
More than two decades on, five standards have been approved, covering communications, employment, transportation, customer service and outdoor public spaces. They require, for example, buses to have ramps for wheelchair users, and for large companies to make their websites compatible with software that reads text aloud.
But proposed standards for the province’s health care and education systems – which include demands for new staff training to change attitudes toward people with disabilities and provisions to ensure buildings are accessible – have sat in limbo since 2022 under the Progressive Conservative government led by Doug Ford.
David Lepofsky, a lawyer and long-time advocate for those with disabilities who was among the activists who led the charge for the original 2005 bill, said the province quickly lost momentum after setting its 2025 goal and failed to properly enforce the rules it managed to bring in.
“They have passed some regulations, some accessibility standards. But they are way too weak, way too narrow, and they don’t cover the vast majority of barriers we face,” said Mr. Lepofsky, who is blind and leads an advocacy group called the AODA Alliance. “The bottom line is they failed.”
Mr. Ford’s government, in office for nearly eight years, has neglected the AODA like no other, he said. Unlike previous Liberal premiers, Mr. Ford has never met with his group, Mr. Lepofsky said. And he said he hasn’t been able to formally meet with Mr. Ford’s Minister for Seniors and Accessibility, Raymond Cho, either, for at least five years. Plus, no new accessibility standard has been approved since 2017, the year before the Ford government first came to power.
Mr. Lepofsky says the design of the bike path near Eglinton Ave and Avenue Road is dangerous for blind people like him.
In a review required by the legislation two-and-half years ago, Toronto accessibility consultant Rich Donovan excoriated the government’s progress on the AODA, bluntly concluding its efforts had been an “unequivocal failure.”
The report, finished in June, 2023, but not released by the government until that December, recommended declaring the situation facing Ontario’s 2.9 million people with disabilities a crisis.
Mr. Donovan demanded that the Premier and Cabinet Secretary Michelle DiEmanuele, Ontario’s top civil servant, strike a special committee and come up with an action plan within 30 days. And he called for the creation of a new accessibility agency to oversee efforts.
But his report also said responsibility for private sector entities should be handed to the federal government, which has its own overlapping accessibility legislation. This would allow Ontario to focus on itself and areas it funds, such as hospitals and universities.
In a recent interview, Mr. Donovan said that other than briefing an assistant deputy minister when he submitted his report, he has heard no response from the government since.
“It’s a shock to me,” he said of the silent treatment, given his report’s contents. “Nothing’s changed. That should be disturbing to Ontarians.”
However, Mr. Donovan is also critical of the AODA process. He said its standards are drawn up after a collective-bargaining-like negotiation between disability advocates and industry stakeholders, resulting in rules that are too often divorced from the day-to-day needs of people with disabilities.
Asked to respond to criticism on the government’s progress on the AODA’s goal, Mathew Varsava, a spokesperson for Mr. Cho, said the province recently updated the Ontario Building Code’s accessibility standards.
Mr. Lepofsky and other advocates dismiss these changes as insufficient.
Mr. Varsava said the proposed AODA standards on health care and education had “led to improvements,” including renovations to schools and hospitals and $55-million in grants this year to support postsecondary students with disabilities. Those annual grants long predate the current government. But the Progressive Conservatives increased them to $54-million in 2022-23 from $48-million, after they had remained flat for a decade.
Mr. Varsava also said the ministry has implemented some recommendations from Mr. Donovan’s report, including reviewing emergency evacuation procedures for all government buildings for people with disabilities.
According to the government’s most recent annual report on the AODA, from 2024, ministry staff performed more than 1,000 audits to check whether organizations were following the existing AODA rules. They issued 19 orders to fix problems, and one that came with an undisclosed administrative penalty. The act allows for fines of up to $50,000 for individuals and $100,000 for corporations.
NDP accessibility critic Lise Vaugeois said she agrees with Mr. Donovan’s prescription that a crisis mindset is needed.
“It’s certainly frustrating for people with disabilities, because there are so many barriers,” Ms. Vaugeois said. “It’s also frustrating that it’s not seen as a priority for the government.”
Liberal MPP Stephanie Smyth said Ontario has broken the “clear and unequivocal promise” it made on accessibility by 2025, and called on the government to release a comprehensive plan to meet its obligations under the act.
“Ontarians deserve transparency, honest reporting on progress, and a clear path forward,” she said. “Above all, they deserve a government that treats accessibility not as an afterthought, but as a fundamental human right.”