AODA Alliance
ACCESSIBILITY FOR ONTARIANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT ALLIANCE
News Release – For Immediate Release
Saturday, May 10, 2025 is a Bittersweet Anniversary for 2.9 Million Ontarians with Disabilities Trying to Tear Down Accessibility Barriers
May 9, 2025 Toronto: Tomorrow will be a profoundly bittersweet day for 2.9 million Ontarians with disabilities. Twenty years ago tomorrow, on May 10, 2005, the Ontario Legislature unanimously passed the historic Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) after people with disabilities across Ontario tenaciously campaigned for a decade to win its enactment.
It is a sweet anniversary, because it led to Canada’s first comprehensive law being enacted, one that required the Ontario Government to lead the province to become accessible to people with all kinds of disabilities by 2025. Watch the historic final vote in the Legislature on May 10, 2005, the standing ovation that MPPs gave the Act’s passage, and the Queen’s Park news conference with speakers from the Government, the disability community, and the business sector. The idea for this legislation and its key ingredients all came bottom-up from the disability community, not top-down from the Government. It inspired later passage of accessibility legislation in Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, British Columbia, Saskatchewan and at the federal level.
It is bitter because 20 years later, Ontario is nowhere near its mandatory goal of full accessibility. Despite some improvements, Ontarians with disabilities continue to face barrier after barrier when they try to get a job, ride public transit, get an education in our schools, or get health care services.
“Ontario is in an accessibility crisis and needs to implement a crisis response,” said non-partisan AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky, who led the campaign from 1994 to 2005 to get the Disabilities Act enacted. “That is the wise advice that the Ontario Government received two years ago from an Independent Review of the Disabilities Act conducted by Government-appointed Rich Donovan.”
A positive and helpful way for Premier Ford to begin his new term in office would be for him to agree to meet with AODA Alliance representatives.
“The AODA Alliance and other disability advocates are now gearing up to forge ahead with our accessibility campaign,” said Lepofsky. “We’re as tenacious as ever and are ready to offer the Government constructive ideas for fulfilling its mandate under the Disabilities Act.”
Contact: AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky, aodafeedback@gmail.com Twitter: @aodaalliance