In the fourth review of the AODA, Rich Donovan states that Ontario will not be fully accessible by 2025. In other words, the provincial government will not meet its own deadline under the AODA. Limited creation, implementation, and enforcement of AODA standards impacts the well-being and safety of Ontarians with disabilities. Therefore, Donovan recommends that the Ontario government should declare this lack of progress on accessibility a crisis. This crisis state should last six (6) months. During this time, the Ontario government should form a crisis committee to implement crucial accessibility improvements in the province. The Premier should act as the chair of this committee, and the Secretary of Cabinet should act as co-chair. Furthermore, Donovan outlines tactical recommendations the province should follow to fulfill its remaining responsibilities in the public sector. One of these tactical recommendations is gathering data on life expectancy of people with disabilities.
Gathering Data on Life Expectancy of People with Disabilities
The review states that there is no data about the life expectancy of people with disabilities, compared to the life expectancy of people without disabilities. However, many factors may shorten the life expectancy of people with disabilities. For example, lack of accessible emergency response protocol regularly endangers the lives of people with disabilities. Similarly, people with disabilities may be at more risk from illnesses such as COVID-19 than people without disabilities. Data on life expectancy of people with disabilities would help the government better understand how much more at risk people with disabilities are, and begin to mitigate that risk.
Recommendations
Therefore, the review recommends that the Ministry of the Solicitor General should require coroners to include disability in their reports. In other words, when a coroner writes a report about someone who had a disability, the coroner should mention that disability in their report. Moreover, details about disability from coroners’ reports should appear in the data gathered by the review’s recommended research team. Moreover, these details should also appear in data used as an accessibility lens in public policy decisions.
The fourth review of the AODA recommends gathering data on the life expectancy of people with disabilities. Learn more now.