As the PanAm Games draw to a close and Toronto prepares for the ParaPanAm Games to get underway, accessibility issues are leaving something to be desired for patrons with disabilities.

Recently, Yahoo Canada highlighted how walker user Mary Penner lost out on her $150 accessible seats to the opening ceremonies because someone was already sitting in them and Global News reported the story of Joey Freeman, a man with multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's disease who had to walk 400 metres from his parking spot to the Rogers Centre after finding no accessible parking close by for the Opening Ceremonies Dress Rehearsal.

Then, when looking for an accessible entrance close to his seat, he was instructed by a PanAm volunteer to walk from one gate to another on the other side of the building and the route back to his car became just as circuitous.

PanAm/ParaPanAm Games CEO Saad Rafi insists that both volunteers and staff received extensive training on accommodating people with disabilities. He told Global they received “[training] both on diversity language and on accessibility.”

But David Lepofsky, chairman of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance, is not surprised by what Penner and Freeman experienced.

Symptoms of a Larger Problem

“Incidents like the ones described if accurate, are strong illustrations that after ten years of having the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act [AODA], we are nowhere near reaching full accessibility by 2025 and after ten years this law has not made a significant difference in the lives of people with disabilities in Ontario,” he says.

The Ontario Government admitted as much in 2010 when, for the first time, the progress of the AODA legislation was independently reviewed. Former Liberal MPP Charles Beer called for “more focused attention at the highest levels of government.”

These sentiments were echoed in the latest mandated review by Mayo Moran, a University of Toronto law professor and provost of Trinity College, who acknowledged the “slow and challenging implementation to date” and suggested that “the commitment of the premier and, through her, the government of Ontario can make a critical difference at this time.”

For Lepofsky, Penner not being able to see from her seat and PanAm volunteers not being able to accurately direct Freeman to an accessible entrance are just symptoms of wider and more consistent issues around accessibility in this province. The lack of hospitality for people with disabilities at the PanAm Games is simply a microcosm of a much larger failure on the part of the provincial government.

“The kinds of accommodations sought in these instances are ones which are not hard to do and the needs didn't only arise the moment these people presented them,” says Lepofsky.

Economic Impacts

Failure at such a basic level, notes Lepofsky, does harm not just to people with disabilities, but Toronto's own Tourism and Hospitality Industry. Not being able to accommodate people with disabilities means a huge economic loss for the province.

“Tourism and hospitality, of the kind illustrated in these incidents, is a huge area where Ontario and Toronto lag behind and are economically shooting themselves in the foot,” he says.

“There are estimated to be a billion people with disabilities around the world – around 1.8 million Ontarians have a disability with 4 million across Canada – that's a huge tourism and hospitality market. To the extent that Toronto and Ontario remain a problematic destination in terms of accessibility, it's not going to be an attractive place for them to come and spend their tourism dollars. Therefore, all of Ontario loses.”

It's not like the Ontario Government doesn't know this. In 2010, with the introduction of some new accessibility standards in the AODA, they commissioned a report on the economic benefits of having a more accessible province. Along with an improved labour force, more participation in higher education and saving on healthcare and social assistance costs, one of the main benefits was the expansion of the retail and tourism sectors.

“In the case of the PanAm/ParaPanAm Games, they want people to go to the events. They also want people to go eat after, leave the bubble of the games themselves, and be able to ensure they can find a place to stay that's accessible, a taxi that's accessible, use public transit that's accessible and even go to a bathroom that's accessible,” says Lepofsky.

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