Blog Articles About Accessibility

Live Your Life Outside Your Blog: Guest Post on Cateepoo Blog

My friend Cathy issued a challenge for May’s Arthritis Awareness Month in the US: live your life outside your blog. She tasked some people she knew, including me, to describe how we share our RA outside our blogs, without it taking over our lives. My guest post appears on The Life and Adventures of Cateepoo…

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Barriers to Creating Accessible Housing, Part I: Ontario Building Code Accessibility Standards

As you may be aware, I have been doing advocacy work in accessibility for many years, serving on a variety of committees. In the last three years, I have been involved in the R-PATH Committee, which advocates for accessibility in Toronto Community Housing (TCH). I have long been very frustrated with the lack of usable…

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#TOtheWaterfront: Opening the Blue Edge

Last Friday, I was at the official opening of the revitalized Queen’s Quay. But I get ahead of myself. Look for the guy in the green t-shirt, they said… Four years ago, I posted about accessibility barriers in the path to the beach. Subsequently my MPP, Glen Murray, a true champion of universal design, facilitated…

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Where the Surf Meets the Sand

The last time I was on a beach was the summer I turned 14. It was also the last time I walked Photo by Ole Andersen The doctors had given me a reprieve before I was to report at the hospital and get encased in plaster to spend a month in a body cast. My…

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Yes Lene, There Is a (an Accessible) Santa Claus

At a certain point in life, you realize that the mystical, magical creatures who populated your childhood are perhaps more prosaic in origin. The Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, Santa… Adulthood takes over and the world loses a bit of its shine. And then something happens to make you realize that the magic never went…

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Refusal of Care: Disabled Women and Breast Cancer Screening

  Updated March 16, 2022 I was long past the recommended age to have a mammogram the first time I had one. The reason? Lack of accessibility in cancer screening equipment and procedures. And I’m not alone. Breast cancer is the most frequent type of cancer among women, yet women who have a disability are…

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Fashion for Real Life: Clothes for People with Disabilities

Living well with a disability has a lot to do with finding new ways to do things. Likewise, accessibility is about throwing out the norm and finding another way to your goal. “Izzy Camilleri has seamlessly united fashion, form, and comfort by defying centuries of design and pattern-making conventions. Most fashions are designed for a…

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Corrupting Youthful Minds

When I was young(er), I very much wanted to be a teacher. As I was finishing my Masters degree in Social Work, I seriously considered going on to do a PhD in Sociology. And then I realized that if you counted from grade 1, I’d spent 27 years in school and that was enough for…

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Arthritis and Employment: Show Us Your Hands!

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Seating Arrangements

Last Friday, I went to a Toronto concert hall to hear David Sedaris read from his new book Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls — a book that apparently has nothing to do with diabetes, although owls do make a rather hilarious appearance. I had no idea what to expect. In fact, on some level I…

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Strive to Include

I was going to take a break from writing about accessibility and barriers to same. There was enough of an inaccessibility flurry before my birthday, what with Winners and Metro, the LCBO and Buskerfest and to be honest, I’m tired. Tired of not being able to use stores and spaces the same way my able-bodied…

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The Annual Rant

This might be my last rant about Buskerfest. Despite it having become an annual tradition to which I know you’re all looking forward with bated breath (no?), it may be time to close the series (2005, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011). Not because Buskerfest has magically become a paragon of accessibility – were it only so….

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