01/04/2025
Happy 2025! Isn't it great that we are now living in an accessible Ontario!? I celebrated this milestone with this thank you note to the gov. Lol
Toothless
Sioux Lily Dickson
January 1st, 2025
Happy New Year! 2025 will be my year despite the AODA.
Will the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005 (AODA) make a difference for those of us demanding equity, or will governments continue to push us under when they want to reduce budgets?
Legislation without penalty is mere suggestion. Asking nicely didn’t reduce drinking and driving—persistent enforcement did.
That the AODA is fully realized on January 1st, 2025, is laughable: “Become accessible if it is convenient.” Governments want you to see them making a fuss about accessibility while doing things to the contrary, like imprisoning the disabled with poverty. What’s the point of an accessible Ontario if the only place those living in disability-related poverty can go is the food bank?
Ask anyone who is disabled, and we’ll tell you the notion of full accessibility in 2025 is absurd. Ask an able-bodied person, and they think it’s already accessible.
We need you to demand dignity for disabled people by ensuring they have enough resources to at least be near the poverty line. We can’t afford food, housing, medicine, or care. Our crime of being disabled is punished with poverty as designed by policy. That a death option exists but a living with dignity option doesn’t offends my sensibilities. MAiD saves the government money, but disabled people want the choice to live with dignity before having no choice but to seek dignity through MAiD in death. The people who love us see us as more than numbers on a balance sheet. We’re priceless.
Learn more: aoda.ca/what-is-the-aoda
Find your MPP: ola.org/members
Find your MP: ourcommons.ca/Members
Image Description:
A green Toronto skyline boasts various shades of green. The water reflects the skyline discordantly, like conversations on accessibility. In the water, wheelchair icons with an artist’s palette for a wheel succumb to the conditions. In the foreground, a shark has a mouth full of sugar-coated gumdrops for teeth. It bobs in the water, stuck in a life preserver that reads “Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, AODA.”
Text reads: “The AODA is not accessibility.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/DERT8FMJrQy/?igsh=MXh2encxajJqZWQx
