AODA Alliance
Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance Update
United for a Barrier-Free Society for All People with Disabilities
Web: www.aodaalliance.org
Email: aodafeedback@gmail.com
Twitter: @aodaalliance
Facebook: www.facebook.com/aodaalliance/
On YouTube, Watch TVO’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin’s Coverage of the Ontario Election’s Disability Issues – and – Use Our Action Tips to Raise Disability Accessibility Issues in this Election
May 13, 2022
SUMMARY
All in one place, we give you ready-to-use action tips to raise disability issues in this election, whether on accessibility or other important disability issues! Just add water, stir, and swing into action!
MORE DETAILS
1. Any Time, Please Watch the Agenda with Steve Paikin’s May 11, 2022 Discussion of the Ontario Election’s Disability issues, with AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky.
Did you miss the May 11, 2022 discussion of the Ontario election’s disability issues on Ontario’s flagship public affairs program The Agenda with Steve Paikin? No problem! Watch it online any time you want, on your computer, tablet, smart phone or smart TV! If you want to cut and paste the link to share with others, it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBAKVZG9gOY
TVO usually posts a transcript of interviews like this within a few days.
Urge as many people as possible, including candidates in this election, to watch this discussion. Forward this update to them. Publicize it on social media. Post the link to this on your Facebook page or website.
We thank Steve Paikin and the staff of The Agenda for once again being a true leader in the media by focusing election coverage upon disability issues. We need all members of the media’s Queen’s Park press corps to do the same. Doug Ford should not be given a free pass on his failing to even answer the AODA Alliance’s November 22, 2022 written request for election commitments on disability accessibility issues.
2. Election Action Tips: Tell Candidates that the Million-Strong Disability Vote Counts!
It’s time for voters with disabilities and voters without disabilities to swing into action.
We need your help to press the Ontario Conservative Party to answer our November 22, 2022 request for election commitments to make Ontario accessible to 2.6 million Ontarians with disabilities. The other parties have done so. Our goal is to get the Tories to do so as well.
As in the last seven Ontario elections, our non-partisan coalition does not try to elect or defeat any party or candidate. No matter who is elected, we want Ontario to have a strong plan to lead this province to full accessibility for people with disabilities. Help us, no matter which party you support, or if you support no party at all.
Questions for Progressive Conservative Candidates
Premier Ford is the only party leader that has not made any commitments in this election to tear down disability barriers that impede over 2.6 million Ontarians with disabilities from getting a job or using important services like public transit, education and health care. In the last election, he pledged that these issues would be close to the heart of the Ontario Progressive Conservative party.
This is the first time in almost two decades that the Tories have not even answered a request for these disability commitments during an Ontario election. In contrast, the Liberals, NDP and Greens have all made disability accessibility election promises.
- Do you agree that the Conservative Party should answer the request for election commitments on accessibility in Ontario for people with disabilities?
- Will you ask Premier Doug Ford to make election commitments on accessibility for people with disabilities in this election?
Action Tip #1: Raise Our Issues at All-Candidates Debates and Other Election Events in Your Community, and Video-Record Candidates’ Answers
Please go to virtual or in-person all-candidates debates and other campaign events in your riding. Publicly ask the questions we list above. Search online to find the all-candidates debates in your riding, so you can attend them.
If you have a smart phone, video or audio record your question and the candidates’ answers. Then, share your video or audio recording on social media like Facebook and Twitter. Post it on YouTube. Let us know what you recorded by emailing us at aodafeedback@gmail.com
Call a campaign office for a candidate in your riding to find out when and where there will be candidate debates and other campaign events that you can attend. Check out our incomplete list of candidates around Ontario and their contact info.
If you hear that an All-Candidates Debate or other campaign event may be held in an inaccessible location, immediately raise it with the campaigns and with the media. Let us know about it.
Sign up to attend in person or virtually the May 17, 2022 All-Candidates Debate on disability issues that will be moderated by AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky. Get others to do so as well.
Action Tip #2: Raise Our Disability Accessibility Issues Directly with the Candidates and Their Campaign Offices in Your Community
Please get our message directly to the candidates in your riding, at their offices or at your doorstep. If you have a smart phone, use it to record what you ask and what the candidates say. Post that video on YouTube or Facebook or wherever you can, and share it with us and the world. Here again, you can become a citizen journalist, creating a record and sharing it with others!
Contact the campaign offices of the candidates running in your riding. We have posted a riding-by-riding list of their email addresses and Twitter handles. Email them the AODA Alliance’s May 3, 2022 news release on the parties’ platforms on disability accessibility. Urge them or their campaign workers to support our non-partisan call for the next Ontario Government to make faster progress towards full accessibility by 2025 and not cut any gains we’ve made to date. Encourage them to watch the May 11, 2022 edition of the Agenda with Steve Paikin on the election’s disability issues.
Action Tip #3: Widely Circulate the AODA Alliance’s May 3, 2022 News Release on the Parties’ Platforms on Disability Accessibility and the AODA Alliance’s New Video on Public Transit Disability Barriers
Paste the AODA Alliance’s May 3, 2022 news release about the parties’ disability accessibility platforms into an email to friends, family members and community organizations to which you are connected. In your email’s subject line, you might say “Read About this Election’s Disability Accessibility Issues.” In your email you could suggest that the recipient forward it on to their friends and family and that they watch the May 11, 2022 interview on disability election issues on The Agenda with Steve Paikin. The links to that video are in that news release and are set out near the start of this Action Kit.
Post a copy of the AODA Alliance’s May 3, 2022 news release and links to the AODA Alliance’s public transit video on your Facebook page, other websites or blogs, or on hard-copy bulletin boards.
Bring copies of the May 3, 2022 AODA Alliance news release with you to community organization meetings and social gatherings. Hand them out, or leave them on a table where others make leaflets and other such things available for the public.
Action Tip #4: Bring Our Message to Your Local Media
Contact your local media. Urge them to cover this issue. Email or fax them the May 3, 2018 AODA Alliance news release, and press them to watch the AODA Alliance’s new video on public transit accessibility barriers. Let them know about our grassroots election blitzes that many in the mainstream media often don’t sufficiently cover. Send them the links at the end of this Action Kit. Urge them to cover these election issues that concern over 2.6 million Ontarians with disabilities as well as their families and friends. Remind them that the number of persons with disabilities in Ontario is growing as the population ages. There are at least 1 million voters with disabilities in Ontario right now.
If you know any reporters, columnists or editors in your community, urge them to cover this.
Call in to phone-in radio shows. Bring our issue directly to the public. Educate the audience. If a candidate or party leader is on a phone-in radio program, call to ask them about the election’s disability issues.
Write a guest column or letter to the editor on our issue for your local newspaper. Feel free to cut and paste as much as you want from our AODA Alliance Updates, and our website.
Action Tip #5: Use Social Media like Facebook and Twitter to Spread the Word
If you use Facebook, visit our Facebook page. It is called “Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance.”
Click “like” on our Facebook page, so your Facebook friends will learn more about us.
Click on your Facebook page that you “like” our specific postings on the Ontario election and click to share them with your Facebook friends.
If you use Twitter, be sure to follow us. We are at @aodaalliance. Our chair David Lepofsky is at @davidlepofsky. We use both addresses to share the same updates. Following either will ensure that you get the latest news. In addition to tweeting our AODA Alliance Updates that you can get via email, we also use Twitter to share other quick bits of information about this election’s disability issues and about disability issues around the world, which may not find their way into our email AODA Alliance Updates.
Check Twitter every day during this election campaign. Please re-tweet as many of our AODA Alliance tweets as you can, and especially those that we address to candidates in this election.
Encourage others to follow us on Twitter.
Action Tip #6: Community Organizations — Spread the Word Through Your Networks!
If you are a staff member, volunteer or board member of a community organization or are on a Municipal Accessibility Advisory Committee or school board’s Special Education Advisory Committee, please use their networks to spread the word on this election’s disability accessibility issues.
Get your organization to link its website to ours. Make this link directly to:
Your link might say, “Learn about the non-partisan grassroots campaign to make Ontario fully accessible for 2.6 million people with disabilities.”
Get your organization to take the steps we list earlier regarding social media.
Links to Key Resources to Help You Join Our Election Campaign Blitz
- For all the news on our disability advocacy during this election, visit the AODA Alliance website’s 2022 election page.
- The AODA Alliance’s May 3, 2022 news release on the parties’ election platforms on disability accessibility.
- The April 6, 2022 letter to the AODA Alliance from the Ontario New Democratic Party, setting out its party’s 2022 Ontario election commitments on accessibility for #pollwatch.
- The March 22, 2022 letter to the AODA Alliance from the Ontario Green Party, setting out its party’s 2022 Ontario election commitments on accessibility for #pollwatch.
- The May 1, 2022 letter to the AODA Alliance from the Ontario Liberal Party, setting out its party’s 2022 Ontario election commitments on accessibility for #pollwatch.
- The AODA Alliance’s November 22, 20221 letter to the party leaders, listing the election promises on disability accessibility that they are asked to give.
- The April 18, 2022 AODA Alliance Update’s review of the Ford Government’s record on disability issues: “During Its Four Years in Power, Ford Government Made Ontario a More Dangerous Place for Vulnerable People with Disabilities”.
- The April 29, 2022 AODA Alliance Update’s analysis of the Ford Government’s 2022 budget: “The Ford Government’s 2022 Ontario Budget is a Slap in the Face for 2.6 Million Ontarians with Disabilities.”