On Monday May 31, I spoke in response to a Ministerial statement on Access Awareness Week. I spoke of a greater need for recognition of mental as well as physical disabilities and the need to assure access and accommodation for those with disabilities. I also spoke of the need for better progress on the accessibility standards on information and communication, on transportation and on the built environment.
Manitoba Access
Awareness Week
Mr. Gerrard: Accessibility
awareness week is an important week. It's a week dedicated to achieving greater
understanding and support for children and adults with disabilities–or, as we
often say, special abilities.
We all need to be aware of the
physical and mental or brain disabilities. Too often the mental or brain
disabilities are hidden and not recognized and, as a result, not accommodated
for. Such mental and brain disabilities include, as an example, learning disabilities.
Learning disabilities, in part
because they're less visible, are often inadequately recognized and inadequately
helped. We need to do much better to accommodate such learning disabilities as
well as to recognize and accommodate physical disabilities.
Under The Accessibility for
Manitobans Act, there are five accessibility standards. Two of these, the
regulations have been passed–customer service and employment standards. But we
are still waiting for progress on three of these standards: the information
and communication standards, which addresses barriers to accessing one-way
static information, as well as two-way interactive communication; the
transportation standard, which applies to barriers for Manitobans that are
encountered when getting to work or school, shopping, socializing or other
aspects of daily life; and the design of public space standards–the built
environment–deals with the accessibility to the design and construction that
falls outside the jurisdiction of the Manitoba Building Code.
We have objected right from the
beginning to the exclusion of addressing issues in the Manitoba
Building Code, and this needs to be changed. But there have been major delays
in the last three standards, and there needs to be a lot of more progress and
a lot more emphasis on achieving these.
The excuse may be given that the
pandemic has been upon us but, in fact, the pandemic has realized, for all of
us, the deficiencies that we have in achieving these standards. And the
pandemic should have been a time when more, not less, effort was dedicated to
achieving these standards for those with disabilities.
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