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We’re furious, but we’re tenacious.

Two decades ago, the Ontario Legislature unanimously promised that by Jan. 1, 2025, the Ontario government would lead this province to become accessible to people with all kinds of disabilities when it passed the historic ��(�����ٴ�).

The AODA is Canada’s first comprehensive disability accessibility law. On May 10, 2005, MPPs gave the passage of that landmark law a resounding standing ovation.

The AODA has brought about some progress, but far less than Ontario could have achieved.

Ontarians awoke on New Year’s Day in 2025 to a province that is still brimming with many preventable and soul-crushing disability barriers when we people with disabilities try to get a job, ride public transit, get health care services, go to school or university, or simply use public sidewalks.

Some of those barriers are described in extraordinary detail in last month’s .

Over the past 15 years, disability advocates and government-appointed experts repeatedly forewarned government after government and minister after minister the 2025 deadline would be missed unless successive governments ramped up this issue as a priority and effectively implemented the AODA.

And we weren’t the only ones.

Unfair recurring barriers that too often victimize people with disabilities were documented in government-appointed independent reviews of the AODA in 2015, 2019, and 2023.

Those recommendations weren’t followed.

We are more determined than ever to get the accessible province we were legislatively promised 20 years ago.

Last November, individuals with disabilities gave wrenching accounts of disability barriers to Ontario’s four political parties at community public hearings at Queen’s Park.

We know how to fix this mess.

Earlier this month, we went to Queen’s Park to unveil the “” which we sent to Ontario’s party leaders. You can watch our

The Accessible Ontario Pledge would lead this province to become accessible as soon as possible after the legislated 2025 deadline.

Over the past 30 years, each Ontario political party has turned to our movement to share its expertise on achieving an accessible Ontario when the AODA was being written and afterwards when it was being implemented.

Our predecessor coalition led the fight from 1994 to 2005 to get the Disabilities Act passed. We, at the AODA Alliance, led the uphill battle to get the AODA effectively implemented.

Our proposed Accessible Ontario Pledge draws on all our accumulated experience and expertise.

Our new Accessible Ontario Pledge lays out a comprehensive 10-point plan and specific deadlines for the government to put in place all the accessibility standards needed to achieve the accessible province people with disabilities have been legislatively promised.

It is carefully crafted to ensure the AODA’s effective enforcement, to provide obligated organizations with much-needed free technical assistance on needed accessibility, to effectively deploy other levers of government power and to make sure there is no backsliding on accessibility.

If Premier Doug Ford calls a spring election, we ask the parties to make the Accessible Ontario Pledge as part of their campaigns. 

Ontario’s Green Party has made the Accessible Ontario Pledge. Now we turn our attention to getting the other provincial parties to sign on to it.

And what if no spring Ontario election is called?

In 2022, the Ford government won a mandate to govern up to June 2026. We turn to the Ford government to make the Accessible Ontario Pledge now and to immediately start implementing it. 

The AODA did not vanish on New Year’s Day and neither did our non-partisan grassroots movement.

The media is asking us “What comes next?” Our Accessible Ontario Pledge is our constructive answer.

Our battle continues — we’re determined.