Tag Archives: disability

Defamation And Disability Advocacy

Posted on by
Reply

My defamation lawsuit against the town clerk and town of Amherstburg is the result of my disability advocacy four years ago.

In January 2022, I critiqued the draft multi-year accessibility plan council approved in December 2021.

I submitted what I perceived to be deficiencies of the draft plan to council, as I had done for decades.

I conveyed my concerns about the plan, council’s approval of the traditional voting method for 2022 and highlighted some barriers. 

I provided input on the town’s accessibility plans since the Ontarians with Disabilities Act (ODA) 2001 required organizations to create them annually.

The ODA’s purpose was to “improve opportunities for persons with disabilities and to provide for their involvement in the identification, removal and prevention of barriers to their full participation in the life of the province.” 

The ODA mandated plan contents. 

Plans were to include a report on measures taken, measures in place, and the next year’s measures to take to identify, remove and prevent barriers. 

The town was also required to assess, review and list its by-laws, policies, programs, practices and services to identify barriers.

I delegated to council and the accessibility committee; I emailed and wrote letters to the editor to help raise awareness of some barriers.

I had already advocated for ten years for an accessible library, but the town remained silent.

Throughout the decade the town pursued funding for other projects like a marina and arena, despite the provincial government’s grant stipulation that accessibility was the number one priority.

Finally, my human rights complaint against the town was settled and an elevator was installed in the library along with accessible parking spaces.

The town installed a plaque in the library lobby crediting others with my accomplishment.

I reiterated some of the barriers that were either not included in the plans or were not removed when they could have been.

For example, an accessible town website was relegated to year 3 of the town’s first accessibility plan, then listed as a priority for 2005, and then 2006.

A 2007 report informed council that the website was compliant with W3C accessibility standards but it wasn’t, according to an external expert. 

In 2009, a newly designed website was unveiled and problems continued. 

In 2011, I mentioned difficulty navigating the website. 

In 2014, Amherstburg was invited to hire esolutions when Essex County redesigned its site to meet accessibility standards; Leamington and Essex had already hired the company, but Amherstburg declined. 

According to the town’s site, esolutions redesigned Amherstburg’s site in 2016, although it still had issues.

Thousands of dollars and redesigns later, in 2020 administration recommended, and council agreed, to request the province to extend the AODA January 1, 2021 website compliance deadline to at least January 1, 2022 due to COVID-19.

Following the January 1, 2022 deadline extension request, the province agreed the town’s work should be completed prior to December 31, 2024. 

The new website redesign and refresh was not to exceed $70,000, excluding HST.

The AODA 2005 now requires organizations to review their multi-year plans every five years but report annually on barrier removal progress.

Although the town’s plan review is due by December 2026, the town posted a 2026 Multi-Year Accessibility survey on January 26, 2026.

The survey introduction states, “The Town’s Multi-Year Accessibility Plan outlines the outcomes and initiatives that reaffirm the Town’s commitment to an accessible community and to building an equitable and inclusive society that values the contributions of people with disabilities.”

I do not feel like my contributions have been valued – my decades of input parallel decades of barriers.

Despite my repetitive requests for a strong commitment to accessibility, the town failed to meet the 2025 AODA compliance deadline.

In fact, Mayor Prue even declared, ‘this town has not been compliant.’

Commentary by Linda Saxon

Amherstburg Gingerbread House: Accessibility Issues

Posted on by

The Amherstburg Gingerbread House is called a warming house, but it might not be welcoming since it’s not disability inclusive.

Image description: Amherstburg park pavilion building dressed up as a seasonal gingerbread house.

Look! The International wheelchair access symbol sticker is on the door. What makes this accessible? It has a ramp, said the elf. No automatic door, just the second class wait outside for assistance treatment.

The signage might also have accessibility barriers.

Image description: dark brown entrance doors with the international wheelchair access symbol sticker.

Amherstburg is not a disability inclusive community.

Promoting Inclusive Community: A Call to Action for Council Members

Posted on by

My delegation at last night’s council meeting as a person with disabilities, as a representative of residents who reached out to me with their concerns, and on behalf of the Amherstburg Residents Forum, regarding the adverse effect on the disability community of the closing of Murray Street was met with apathy.

Not that it ill have any more effect on council than mentioning, during last night’s delegation, the AODA and the UN Convention On The Rights of Persons With Disabilities, but I emailed council members anyway.

The lack of decorum at last night’s meeting was appalling. I urge you to update the procedural by-law to include a time limit on your speeches, a limit on the number of times you can speak, and a limit on the number of questions to admin. Other municipalities do it and I know you rely on comparators sometimes. Also, a meeting of council is where you, as decision-makers, debate the issues yet admin are invited to participate in debates.

I also urge you to post the council and committee meeting videos to youtube which is a good transparency initiative that other municipalities do.

it’s very disappointing, especially during National AccessAbility Week, that the town is promoting a flag raising or wearing red shirts while votes in favour of closing off yet another public space adversely affects people with disabilities. Shame on you. 

in my opinion, it’s hypocritical to promote anything that may appear as tokenism. we already have plenty of awareness. what we need is a stronger commitment to ensuring we live in an inclusive community, free of discrimination and free of barriers that prevent our human right to equally participate. we need to ensure that we people with disabilities stop encountering attitudinal barriers and ableism. we need elected officials to take a stand and not vote in favour of barriers or spend taxpayer dollars on barriers.

we also need people to realize that input from residents like me, with disabilities, should be welcomed; it should not be met with examples like the attached. chris drew, an accessibility advisory committee member posted this yesterday to the town’s facebook page.

Screenshot

Amherstburg Accessibility Advisory Committee’s Motion vs. Administration Report

Posted on by

Will council agree with its Accessibility Advisory Committee’s (AAAC) motion that this is not just about accessibility or with an administration report to council that accessibility funding should be used?

I shared my concerns with Councillor McArthur, council’s rep to the Committee, and Councillor Pouget who attended the AAAC meeting when the discussion occurred.

  1. Shouldn’t rest areas be more important than more planters?

    In my January email, I urged council to embrace the spirit of the AODA and consult the public regarding Richmond Street sidewalk repairs even though the report to council did not mention public consultation in accordance with the AODA’s Integrated Accessibility Standards Regulation regarding exterior paths of travel, rest areas:

‘Designated public sectors when constructing new or redeveloping existing exterior paths of travel that they intend to maintain, shall consult on the design and placement of rest areas along the exterior path of travel and shall do so in the following manner: 

  1. the public and persons with disabilities.
  2. a municipal accessibility advisory committee if one exits.’
  3. Why use AODA Compliance Reserve Fund?

The January 29 administration report recommended using funds accrued within the accessibility compliance reserve fund which are intended for repairs and improvements designed to reduce or remove barriers and promote greater access to public spaces, goods and services.

The May 13 administration report states the AODA compliance reserve fund was introduced in 2017 as an annual contribution to the reserves of the town of Amherstburg for municipal building and infrastructure improvements to eliminate barriers with regards to accessibility.

The August 2016 Accessibility Advisory Committee Minutes indicate the motion that administration develop a policy that the committee reviews and edits to ensure the town is promoting accessibility in the strategic plan and ask that $50,000 a year starting in the 2017 annual capital budget be set aside for promoting accessibility in public buildings. 

  • Which recommendation should prevail?

The Accessibility Advisory Committee’s April 10 motion, following concerns that AODA Compliance Funds were to be used for the Richmond St. sidewalk repairs, was that council consider the reconsideration of the funding source for reduction by 50%. 

The clerk advised the committee that his professional recommendation to council would be to use that fund because that is why that fund was created.

  • What type of motion is required?

At the April 10 committee meeting, Councillor McArthur asked, couldn’t council in that very meeting make a motion to reconsider it and then either Council says yes to 50% or no to 50% but it could proceed on the same timeline? 

The clerk answered that yes, if the motion was carefully worded, where it asked for the funding consideration to be reviewed, he didn’t think there would be any reason why they couldn’t be shifted after they were already spent. If for example, it was 31,000 drawn out of the reserve but this recommendation was that it shouldn’t be funded from this reserve then Council could pull the funds from another reserve to replenish that; they do journal entries all the time.

The clerk repeated that if the committee wished to have council look at that and fund it from a different source if it was worded right the project could continue.

Councillor Donald McArthur stated if the committee is comfortable with 50% he’d happily go to council and ask them to reconsider the funding source. 

The May report to council addresses a reconsideration. ‘It is debatable whether such a motion would be permissible though, as portions of the original motion which would be the subject of the reconsideration have already been acted upon, and as such, are not open to be reconsidered. The reconsideration of the funding source would need to be considered outside of the reconsideration on the consultation and/or whether the works should be undertaken. A less procedurally fraught motion would be to cause $16,000 worth of funding to be redirected to the AODA Compliance Reserve fund, from another funding source to offset the associated costs. That said, such a motion is not recommended by Administration as funding this $16,000 from another reserve creates a need to identify $16,000 of unbudgeted and unplanned expense which may have adverse impacts on other projects.’

Didn’t council approve $450,000. of unbudgeted and unplanned expense for pickleball?

Who Are ‘You People’?

Posted on by

Someone started a rant to me with ‘you people just want to complain’ and included ‘wheelers’ in response to a Facebook conversation about inclusivity of an event.

‘You people,’ like ‘those people’ implies, to me, that people with disabilities are a separate segment of society. And, historically, people with disabilities have been disadvantaged, not by disabilities, but by a society where ableism prevailed and the identification, prevention and removal of barriers hasn’t been a priority.

As a person with disabilities, the barrier that I encounter the most is the attitudinal barrier; it’s usually based on stereotypical beliefs that people using wheelchairs make up the majority of the disability community or that people are demanding extra.

Do you know anyone that has or has had cancer? diabetes? arthritis? MS? lung disease? heart disease? dyslexia? low vision? hearing loss? ADHD? depression? anxiety? Then you know someone that has a disability.

While there are legislative definitions of ‘disability,’ there are also various models of disability that describe attitudes toward people with disabilities and I can usually quickly spot and categorize where people fit in.

There is a longer list, but briefly, the medical model where members of the medical community need to ‘fix’ an individual. The charity model; I see photo ops of politicians at charity events where people with disabilities are depicted as victims of tragedy and are pitied. What I sometimes hear are political comments related to costs and how things take time. The social model, and more recently the human rights model, emphasizes that it’s the environmental and attitudinal barriers that prevent people with disabilities from equally participating in communities, even though everyone has the right to equality.

There is also preferable and inclusive language but people still use the outdated ‘handicap’ and other euphemisms.

Ignorance is no excuse in 2024. It’s also unacceptable to personally attack people with disabilities on social media for ‘complaining’ about a lack of access or pointing out attitudinal barriers.