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
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aodaalliance
Twitter: @aodaalliance
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/aodaalliance
TikTok @AODAAlliance
New 12-Lecture Series of Free Online Videos Teaches You Practical Skills for Effectively Advocating on Disability Rights Issues or for Any Social Justice Cause
August 24, 2026
SUMMARY
Do you want to advocate on a social justice issue, whether for disability rights or some other cause? Here is a free online way to get practical skills for this.
These are the lectures and reading materials for a course to be offered at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law during the spring term in 2027. They are all available on the AODA Alliance website’s new social justice page.
We want to help as many people as possible to learn these practical skills, in addition to those University of Ottawa law students who take the course. Those students will also have in-class exercises not included here, and other activities for learning.
To help as many people as possible to acquire these skills, we are therefore posting these videos and reading materials here. Of course, you don’t get any university credit here! You just get a great chance to learn important skills.
The lectures are all delivered by AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky, who is a part time visiting professor of disability rights at the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa. A huge thank you goes to that law faculty for engaging David Lepofsky to develop and teach this course to law students who sign up to take it, and to the excellent team of U of O law students who, as part of their course work, assisted David Lepofsky as he developed this course. The contents draw heavily on advocacy efforts by the AODA Alliance, and before it, its predecessor coalition, the Ontarians with Disabilities Act Committee.
As the platform or illustration for learning these skills, these lectures and reading materials use the world of advocating for the rights of people with disabilities. It specifically addresses the example of advocating for the rights of students with disabilities in schools, who face too many disability barriers. Its action tips and strategies are applicable to social justice advocacy on any social justice issue, not just disability rights.
Who could benefit from these lectures and reading materials?
This content is understandable for and useful for anyone and everyone. You absolutely do not need to be a law student to benefit from these videos and reading materials. You can have no background or experience at all in doing social justice advocacy. If you are an experienced social justice advocate or a total beginner, there is a great deal offered here to enhance your efforts.
The practical skills taught here are relevant whether you want to advocate as an individual, or in a group, or as part of a large organization. This course is being taught in Canada. However the skills addressed in it are universally helpful, wherever you live.
What is available for you here?
There are 12 video-recorded lectures available on YouTube. On this site, you will find a table of contents for these videos, including the title of each lecture and the topics covered in each lecture. If a particular topic within a lecture appeals to you, our table of contents gives you a pinpoint link to jump right to that topic within the video. On YouTube, we also have a playlist of all 12 lectures.
Pick and choose what topics you would like to explore. You can watch any one or more of these lectures, or any part of them, to learn about the topics that most interest you. Think of it like a practical skills buffet! Of course, the greatest benefit comes from watching them all.
These lectures and reading materials are designed to be timeless. The tips offered in them will help even if you watch these lectures years after they were recorded.
Don’t be confused by the unusual numbering of the lectures. There are 12, but the numbering goes from 1 to 11. A twelfth lecture was added after the others, as Lecture 5.1, which is a natural follow-up to Lecture 5. So it goes Lecture 1, Lecture 2, Lecture 3, Lecture 4, Lecture 5, Lecture 5.1, Lecture 6 and so on down to Lecture 11 at the end.
We provide reading materials for each lecture. They include some which are really important, and others that are for further interest. These are all broken down in the course syllabus posted on this site. You can also download the reading materials, sorted by lecture, in a zipped file. It will unzip into a series of folders and subfolders. For each lecture, there is a folder for required reading and a separate folder for further background materials. The course syllabus details all of this.
What topics are covered?
This lecture addresses why it is essential to engage in social justice advocacy. While this lecture focuses on lawyers, its message is applicable to everyone.
This lecture sets the stage for the rest of the lectures, by describing the world of living with a disability, including the inequalities people with disabilities too often face.
This lecture explores the challenges, opportunities and important strategies when advocating for a community or a sector of society, rather than for an individual. This includes identifying for whom the social justice advocate is going to speak and in what role, and the tactical and strategic considerations flowing from these choices.
This lecture investigates the important activity of figuring out what to advocate for, and building support for that agenda. The rest of the lectures focus on how to advocate for that agenda.
This lecture begins to lay out a menu of options for action strategies for advancing a social justice agenda, going beyond the ones most commonly seen in the media.
This lecture adds to the menu of options for action strategies for social justice advocacy, whose exploration began in Lecture 5.
This lecture takes a look at unexpected, non-traditional and unorthodox avenues for advancing a social justice agenda, beyond those explored in Lectures 5 and 5.1.
This is the first of three lectures that investigate how to advocate to a government or governmental body. It focuses on taking a social justice message to a governmental organization, and working one’s way up the bureaucratic ladder.
As the second in the three lecture on advocating to a governmental body, this lecture looks at specific strategies when advocating to a Legislature, Parliament or other legislative body for legislative reforms.
As the third of the three lecture on advocating to a government body, this lecture offers concrete strategies for making a formal presentation to a legislative committee or other form of public hearings.
This is the first of two lectures offering strategies for bringing a social justice advocacy message to the media.
As the second of the two lectures on media strategy, this lecture offers more tips for dealing with the mainstream media and looks at using social media in a social justice advocacy effort.
Feel Free to Incorporate These Materials Into Courses You Teach – You Don’t Need Advance Permission to Use Them
If you teach in any school, college or university, you are welcome to use any and all of these lectures and readings in your courses. This material is truly open-source. For example, these materials can be helpful in law schools, social work programs, political science departments, and in any other area of learning where social justice is a relevant topic.
If you are part of a community organization that wants to train its members or community to do advocacy on social justice issues, you too are welcome to use all or part of these lectures and reading materials.
A Key Supporting Resource for You
An important and helpful resource for this course is the expanding package of episodes of Disability Rights and Wrongs — The David Lepodcast. You can read all about them on the AODA Alliance website’s podcast page. The podcast is available on Apple Music, Spotify and wherever you get your podcasts (except not on YouTube).
How You Can Help
- Please widely publicize this new social justice advocacy training video lecture series. Post it on your social media and/or website.
- If you are in a high school, college, university or other program where it would fit, advocate for your instructors or teachers to incorporate some or all of these video lectures and reading materials into your program.
- We are very eager to get your feedback. How did you use these materials? What parts? Were they helpful?
- Email us at aodafeedback@gmail.com