Ontarians with Disabilities Act Public Comment

When I checked into hotels back in Canada during the same period, saying, "I’m deaf. Is my room accessible?" I’ve been told, "Sure. Drive around to the side door. There is a ramp there." When I explain that accessible means a caption decoder so that I can understand the TV, a TTY, a flashing fire alarm, and a door knock light, I’ve been told that the TV has a volume control so I can just turn it up if I can’t hear it. In 1994, in Belleville, where one of the provincial schools for the deaf is located, I drove to several of the larger hotels in town and was unable to find one that had an accessible room. On at least four occasions in the last ten years, I have been in an Ontario hotel during a fire and/or false alarm. Not once did the hotel staff keep their registration-desk promise to "come and get me if there was a fire", although they regularly gave me their "disabled room", complete with grab rails, low closet rods, knee-level security viewer, and lighting bright enough to do neurosurgery. Once, staying in a Toronto hotel for a government advisory committee meeting, I detected the stillness of the ventilation system shutting off, so I climbed on a chair to touch the grille over the fire alarm speaker, and I thought I felt it vibrating a little. I called home to ask someone to listen to the public address announcement and type the announcement back to me on my own TTY. It was an actual fire, with an actual evacuation ordered. Meanwhile, the in-house TV channel was still cycling through conference room assignments and advertisements inviting people to come down to the bar for a drink. The hotel already had a text based system to communicate with guests and couldn’t bother to use it to convey emergency messages—and no one came to my room to tell me.

On another occasion, I was in a Toronto hotel for an early meeting the next day, and had just returned from a very long flight, I was sick, and I was very tired. Unfortunately, it was convention time and the Liberal "Party" was in full swing in the hall outside my room, well after midnight. I dialled the switchboard on my TTY, and after several attempts I concluded that they had no TTY in the switchboard and/or did not recognize the distinctive beep of an incoming TTY call. I then called the Bell Relay Service to ask them to call the hotel number. They noticed that the number I was calling was the same as the number I was calling from, and launched into an extended, patronizing explanation that if you call yourself, the line is busy. After literally five minutes of argument, I managed to convince the relay operator that this was not the case with a switchboard, and she placed the call. Although the hotel promised to send Security "right up", I had to go through the same ordeal an hour later.

My request to address the public consultation panel was declined, causing me to wonder what is the use of my Ontario Medal for Good Citizenship. I wonder why paternalistic, patronizing "service" agency monopolies are invited to speak for us instead of distinguished members of the community. Testimony from "service" agencies must be viewed as self-serving, since their own ends are furthered by the assertion that the solution to the problem is merely more money to support their activities. In reality, many of their services would not be needed if the mainstream of Ontario business, government, health, education, and transportation were accessible—and accountable for access. As many disabled people can attest, service agencies spend as much time counselling people with disabilities how to have ‘reasonable’ and ‘realistic’ expectations. Too often, all we expect is access. "It’s an unkind world," they say, "and you have to learn how to get along". They counsel us that you catch more flies with honey. Frankly, life is too short to hunt flies.