Read the August 14, 2026 AODA Alliance Brief to the Ontario Government’s Review of the Ontario Building Code

Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance Brief to the Ontario Government’s Review of the Ontario Building Code

August 14, 2026

To: buildingcode.advisorybody@ontario.ca

 

This is the AODA Alliance’s feedback on the pressing need for major disability accessibility reforms to the Ontario Building Code.

 

For decades, the AODA Alliance has been actively identifying major deficiencies in the Ontario Building Code from the perspective of disability accessibility. A building can be fully Code-compliant and yet riddled with accessibility barriers. Harmonizing the Ontario Building Code with other building codes around Canada risks making this worse.

 

Rather than re-inventing the wheel, the AODA Alliance here resubmits to this review the September 13, 2024 AODA Alliance brief to the Design of Public Spaces Standards Development Committee (see attached). We urge this review to fully adopt all of its recommendations.

 

In the brief, we provide links to several major AODA Alliance online videos that illustrate new buildings in Ontario with serious accessibility barriers. Those videos show how deficient the Ontario Building Code has been on accessibility for people with disabilities. We urge this review committee to also view two recent, short AODA Alliance online videos. They reveal two of the many accessibility bungles in new Toronto-area public transit stations, built by Metrolinx:

  1. Serious accessibility barrier in the new Chaplin transit station on the Eglinton Crosstown LRT line, and
  2. The stupidest ramp in the world, at the newly renovated Finch West station on the new Finch West LRT line.

 

We urge the incorporation into the Ontario Building Code of the recommendations in our brief to the Design of Public Spaces Standards Development Committee. We emphasize that we recommend the incorporation of the built environment recommendations, reproduced in the attached brief, which were proposed by the Government-appointed AODA K-12 Education Standards Development Committee in its January 28, 2022 final report. Those recommendations speak to the design of schools, but they are equally applicable to buildings generally.

 

We also submit the February 27, 2002 brief from our predecessor coalition, the Ontarians with Disabilities Act Committee, on the Ontario Building Code. It illustrates how long we have advocated on this issue, without success.

 

The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act required all buildings in Ontario to be accessible by 2025. Most are not, though the deadline was more than one and a half years ago. It is time for Ontario’s outdated Building Code to catch up.

 

More information on our advocacy regarding the Ontario Building Code and the built environment is available on the AODA Alliance website’s built environment page. The AODA Alliance would welcome an opportunity to speak in person or in a virtual meeting to build upon this brief. Contact the AODA Alliance at aodafeedback@gmail.com.