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
Urge Toronto City Council to Pass a Motion at Its June 24 Meeting Calling on Metrolinx to Fix the Disability Barrier Revealed in the Recent 8-Minute AODA Alliance Video
June 19, 2026
SUMMARY
On June 24, Toronto City Council will vote on a motion which Councillor Rachel Chernos Lin has proposed and which the City of Toronto Infrastructure and Environment Committee passed on June 11, 2026. It calls on Metrolinx to fix the disability barrier revealed in the AODA Alliance’s most recent 8-minute online video. That motion states:
“City Council request the Chief Executive Officer, Metrolinx, in consultation with the Chief Executive Officer, TTC, the Toronto Accessibility Advisory Committee and the Accessibility Advisory Committee on Transit, to improve tactile wayfinding for those with visual impairments in stations along Line 5 to ensure that riders can safely navigate to escalators, elevators and stairs, and to establish this as a standard approach for future stations and existing stations undergoing refurbishment.”
The AODA Alliance has written Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow and City Council members, urging them to vote for this motion. We set out that letter below. We applaud Councillor Chernos Lin for bringing this issue forward.
The Ontario Government’s Metrolinx designed the large, irregular, multi-floor labyrinthian transit stations that are especially hard for people with vision loss to independently navigate. Metrolinx commendably installed cane-detectible tactile floor wayfinding markings. However these only give passengers with vision loss the option of using elevators, not stairs or escalators, to go through these stations. Those elevators unpredictably break down, and can be out of service for hours, days or longer. It is ridiculous for the Ontario Government to decide for all passengers with vision loss that they are only to use elevators, not stairs or escalators.
How You Can Help
- Whether you live in Toronto or may ever visit Toronto, please write Mayor Chow and Toronto City Council members. Urge them to pass Councillor Chernos Lin’s motion, recently adopted by the Infrastructure and Environment Committee, that calls on Metrolinx to fix the deficient tactile wayfinding floor markings in the Eglinton Crosstown Line 5 transit stations. Here is the contact information you need for at least some City Council members, generated by Chat GPT:
Olivia Chow, Mayor — mayor_chow@toronto.ca
Vincent Crisanti (Ward 1 – Etobicoke North) — councillor_crisanti@toronto.ca
Stephen Holyday (Ward 2 – Etobicoke Centre) — councillor_holyday@toronto.ca
Amber Morley (Ward 3 – Etobicoke-Lakeshore) — councillor_morley@toronto.ca
Gord Perks (Ward 4 – Parkdale-High Park) — councillor_perks@toronto.ca
: Frances Nunziata (Ward 5 York South-Weston) councillor_nunziata@toronto.ca
James Pasternak (Ward 6 York Centre) councillor_pasternak@toronto.ca
Anthony Perruzza (Ward 7 Humber River-Black Creek) councillor_perruzza@toronto.ca
Mike Colle (Ward 8 – Eglinton-Lawrence) councillor_colle8@toronto.ca
Alejandra Bravo (Ward 9 – Davenport) — councillor_bravo@toronto.ca
Ausma Malik (Ward 10 – Spadina-Fort York) — councillor_malik@toronto.ca
Dianne Saxe (Ward 11 – University-Rosedale) — councillor_saxe@toronto.ca
Josh Matlow (Ward 12 – Toronto-St. Paul’s) — councillor_matlow@toronto.ca
Chris Moise (Ward 13 Toronto Centre) councillor_moise@toronto.ca
Paula Fletcher (Ward 14 Toronto-Danforth) councillor_fletcher@toronto.ca
Rachel Chernos Lin (Ward 15 – Don Valley West) — councillor_chernoslin@toronto.ca
Jon Burnside (Ward 16 – Don Valley East) — Councillor_Burnside@toronto.ca
Shelley Carroll (Ward 17 Don Valley North) councillor_carroll@toronto.ca
Lily Cheng (Ward 18 Willowdale) Councillor_Cheng@Toronto.ca
Brad Bradford (Ward 19 Beaches–East York) Councillor_Bradford@toronto.ca
Parthi Kandavel (Ward 20 Scarborough Southwest) Councillor_Kandavel@toronto.ca
Michael Thompson (Ward 21 – Scarborough Centre) — councillor_thompson@toronto.ca
Nick Mantas (Ward 22 Scarborough–Agincourt) Councillor_Mantas@toronto.ca
Jamaal Myers (Ward 23 Scarborough North) Councillor_Myers@toronto.ca
Paul Ainslie (Ward 24 – Scarborough-Guildwood) — Councillor_Ainslie_CO@toronto.ca
MORE DETAILS
Text of the AODA Alliance’s June 19, 2026 Letter to Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow and Members of Toronto City Council
Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance
United for a Barrier-Free Society for All People with Disabilities
Web: www.aodaalliance.org Email: aodafeedback@gmail.com Twitter: @aodaalliance
June 19, 2026
To: Mayor Olivia Chow and Toronto City Council
Dear Mayor Chow and Members of Toronto City Council,
Re: Accessibility Problems Facing Passengers with Disabilities on the New Eglinton Crosstown Transit Line
At the upcoming June 24, 2026 meeting of Toronto City Council, you will consider a motion that Passed on June 10, 2026. Councillor Rachel Chernos Lin commendably proposed it. We urge City Council to pass this motion. It provides:
“City Council request the Chief Executive Officer, Metrolinx, in consultation with the Chief Executive Officer, TTC, the Toronto Accessibility Advisory Committee and the Accessibility Advisory Committee on Transit, to improve tactile wayfinding for those with visual impairments in stations along Line 5 to ensure that riders can safely navigate to escalators, elevators and stairs, and to establish this as a standard approach for future stations and existing stations undergoing refurbishment.”
In 2022, Metrolinx made a commitment that all stations on the Eglinton line would be accessible. Yet serious accessibility problems were identified very shortly after Line 5 opened. Examples of these are identified in a troubling February 10, 2026 City News report, days after Line 5 opened to the public.
A new 8-minute online video produced by the AODA Alliance has made public an additional barrier in Line 5 stations. Metrolinx could easily have prevented all these barriers when designing and building Line 5 stations.
The motion that comes before you on June 24, 2026 and which we urge you to support concerns the specific disability barrier highlighted in our recent online video. In raising it, we do not prioritize this disability barrier over the many other accessibility problems with this Line 5.
In summary, there is a troubling lack of sufficient wayfinding at the Line 5 stations needed to enable blind and low vision transit passengers to navigate through these large labyrinthian stations. This is especially harmful because Line 5 stations are large, multi-floored, irregularly laid out, and therefore challenging to navigate.
Metrolinx commendably installed cane-detectable wayfinding tactile markings on the floor in Line 5 stations to enable people with vision loss to independently navigate through them. However, Metrolinx made the wrong-headed decision that passengers with vision loss (like me) only use elevators, and never use stairs or escalators when navigating through the several levels of a Line 5 station. Their tactile wayfinding floor markings only direct a passenger with vision loss to and from the station’s elevators. They do not give passengers with vision loss the option of using the stairs or escalators.
Blind and low vision passengers, like all other passengers have the right to choose for themselves whether to use the stairs, escalators or elevators. No Ontario Government bureaucrat should be making that choice for them.
There are good reasons to use the stairs or escalators, for those able to do so, including many people with vision loss. It takes longer to go through a Line 5 station using two successive, sluggish elevators. A passenger must take two elevators in any single station to get from street level to the train tracks.
Moreover, no one should have to depend on transit station elevators if they can avoid it. TTC has a sorry record of having subway station elevators unpredictably out of service. I was at the Cedarvale station on Saturday June 6, 2026, when the elevator from Line 5 to Line 1 was out of service. It was still out of service 12 hours later when I was at that station again the next day.
For any passenger who depends on the Line 5 station elevators, a station becomes inaccessible to them if any elevator is out of service. Metrolinx should not have designed its tactile wayfinding floor markings to make passengers with vision loss unnecessarily depend on the unreliable elevators.
In response to our video about this disability barrier, The media has asked Metrolinx to explain its decision. The evasive Metrolinx responses reported by the Toronto Star, CTV and CBC do not give any reasons for this barrier.
The Ontario Government has pledged to lead Ontario by example when it comes to advancing the cause of disability accessibility. On June 24, 2026 please vote for accessibility. Please vote against the creation of new barriers against people with disabilities, using public money.
Sincerely,
David Lepofsky CM, O. Ont
Chair Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance
Twitter: @davidlepofsky