My name is Darrell, and I am someone with a physical disability called Cerebral Palsy. It affects my legs, hips, and arms as it affects coordination of muscles. Despite this, I have overcome my disability in a variety of ways and refuse to let anything stop me from living the average life of an able bodied person.

Over the past few years I have experienced a problem while hanging out with friends in university: drinking. Whenever I go out to a nightclub, a sporting event, or bar I enjoy the occasional drink and socialize. But I find the more I go to these events, the more my disability gets in my way of having a good time. It seems like every time I go to a social event, I have bouncers, police officers, and security people following me, and telling me that I either can't drink anymore (an unfair judgement considering they don't know my ailment and its effects that well) or attempting to eject me from the bar because they think I am already drunk.

This is a systematic discrimination. A person, regardless of there physical or mental handicaps, deserves the right to socialize and drink like any able-bodied person does at such social events. It is not fair that those of us who appear to be drunk because of a physical handicap get constantly followed, or being told what our limit is by a person who most likely has a basic grasp on our condition in general.

The solution of course, is simple. The Government of Ontario/Canada should put in to place a "Disability Identity Card": A piece of legal government ID which would include

Name

Date of Birth

Nature of Disability (Proper Name, Terminology, etc.)

Photo ID

Characteristics of a Disability (so a Security/Police Officer can make an educated and correct judgement)

These things would help assist someone in decision making when deciding the sobriety of a Disabled Person. Let me make this clear, that I do not want this card to be a "get out of jail-free" card for people with disabilities. The point of the Disability Identity Card is to make sure that the disabled patron is being treated fairly within the confines of Canadian Laws while also ensuring that those who are in a position of power at social events make an educated judgement of the person when it comes to drinking at social events. In addition, the applications for such a card can be expanded into issues such as handicap parking, amusement park handicap passes (a controversy at Disney World), or identity to confirm that we need a certain resource at a public place (An example would be to give someone with claustrophobia a more open-spaced table).

It's a simple idea that solves a complicated problem for people with disabilities. I ask for the Government of Ontario/Canada create a provincial or national Disability Identity Card to help those of us who have trouble convincing the rest of society that we aren't drunk, we just look that way.