AODA Alliance
February 23, 2009
SUMMARY
The AODA Alliance today announces that at the unanimous invitation of the AODA Alliance’s board, David Lepofsky has agreed to take on the role of the chair of the AODA Alliance. The AODA Alliance expresses its deep and abiding gratitude to Catherine Dunphy Tardik for her extraordinary service as the AODA Alliance’s first chair, for the past three years since the Alliance was established.
From 1994 to 2005, David Lepofsky was the co-chair and later the chair of the Ontarians with Disabilities Act Committee, a volunteer position. The province-wide non-partisan ODA Committee is the predecessor to the AODA Alliance. It spearheaded the decade-long campaign that resulted in the enactment of the Ontarians with Disabilities Act 2001 and later the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act 2005. The ODA Committee wound up in August 2005 after the enactment of these laws. The AODA Alliance was immediately launched to pick up where its predecessor, the ODA Committee, left off, to work for the strong, effective and timely implementation of these laws. To learn more about the AODA Alliance’s work on that issue, visit:
http://www.www.aodaalliance.org/category/whats-new/
David Lepofsky has been very involved as an active member of the AODA Alliance. Since early 2006, he has served as the AODA Alliance’s Human Rights Reform Representative. He helped lead our effort to avert the Ontario Government’s privatization of the enforcement of human rights in Ontario via Bill 107. To learn more about that effort, visit:
http://www.www.aodaalliance.org/category/ontario-human-rights/
Please see the message from incoming chair, David Lepofsky, below.
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A message from incoming AODA Alliance chair, David Lepofsky
I am deeply honoured to be asked to take on the role of chair of the AODA Alliance. In its first three years, this coalition has been very effective at raising important issues regarding the implementation of Ontario’s new accessibility laws, and the Human Rights Code that underpins them.
I want to thank our outgoing chair, Catherine Dunphy Tardik, for playing so important a leadership role during the critical years of the AODA Alliance’s early development. We regret that her personal circumstances have made it necessary for her to decide to step down as chair. We are delighted that she is staying on the AODA Alliance board.
As we move into the next phase of the AODA Alliance’s work, we will need the help of individuals and organizations across Ontario – including people with any kind of physical, mental or sensory disability, and people who don’t yet have a disability – to help with our campaign for a barrier-free Ontario for all persons with disabilities. Our many successes in the past have been due to the willingness of so many of you to help get our message out to the public, to call their MPP and local media to raise accessibility issues, and to come up with other new creative ways to contribute.
Together let’s strive for strong, effective accessibility standards to be enacted under the AODA. We will continue, in a spirit of non-partisanship to work constructively with all political parties. We will compliment the Government when it does well. We will urge for better if the Government falls short.
We need your help! Please tell us what you might be able to do to help. We are not looking for money. We are looking for volunteers to help with our advocacy efforts. Email us at: aodafeedback@rogers.com
I look forward to working together with you, and to receiving your ongoing feedback on our ideas, proposals and strategies. You can always reach us at: aodafeedback@rogers.com