They want to hear from YOU! 🗣️
Are you passionate about creating more accessible festivals and events in Canada? Take our Quick Survey and share your experiences, insights, and ideas.
Your feedback will help shape recommendations for Canadian festival and event accessibility standards and influence future policies for Accessibility Standards Canada.
💡 It only takes 2–3 minutes to complete!
🌐 Fill out the survey here: https://www.ilc-vac.ca/festivalaccess-quicksurvey
📅 Survey closes on January 31, 2025.
For questions, contact Lisa, our Research Study Coordinator, at festivals@ilc-vac.ca.
Let’s work together to ensure everyone can enjoy festivals and events equally! 🙌
Category Archives: Advocacy
Discover how to create a more inclusive workplace with CCRW’s Disability Confidence Toolkit!
Sign up for:
Leveraging the Disability Confidence Toolkit
Maria Karimi from CCRW
Thursday, January 23, 10 AM – 11 AM, Virtual
In this engaging one-hour online session, you’ll explore practical strategies to confidently hire, accommodate, and support employees with disabilities. By the end of the session, you’ll be equipped with actionable tools to foster a culture of accessibility and inclusion, empowering your organization to thrive through diversity.
Learn more and sign up for free: https://volunteerottawa.ca/product/leveraging-disability-toolkit/
📘You are invited to the book launch of I Don’t Do Disability and Other Lies I’ve Told Myself
Date and Time: January 15, 2025 @ 7pm
Locations: Perfect Books at 258 Elgin St, Ottawa, ON K2P 1L9
Book launch and conversation with Adelle Purdham, author of I Don’t Do Disability and Other Lies I’ve Told Myself. Adelle is a writer and a mother of three children, one with Down syndrome.
Adelle’s Bio:
Adelle Purdham (she/her) is an educator, parent disability ally, and bestselling author of the memoir-in-essays I Don’t Do Disability And Other Lies I’ve Told Myself (Dundurn Press, 2024). She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from The University of King’s College. Her prose and poetry appear in literary journals, anthologies, magazines, newspapers and online. Adelle is Sessional Part-time faculty at Trent University where she teaches creative writing. She lives and writes in her hometown, Nogojiwanong (Peterborough), Ontario.
Book Description:
I Don’t Do Disability And Other Lies I’ve Told Myself is a raw and intimate portrait of family, love, life, relationships, and disability parenting through the eyes of a mother to a daughter with Down syndrome.
With the arrival of her daughter with Down syndrome, Adelle Purdham began unpacking a lifetime of her own ableism.
In a society where people with disabilities remain largely invisible, what does it mean to parent such a child? And simultaneously, what does it mean as a mother, a writer, and a woman to truly be seen?
The candid essays in I Don’t Do Disability and Other Lies I’ve Told Myself glimmer with humanity and passion, and explore ideas of motherhood, disability, and worth. Purdham delves into grief, rage, injustice, privilege, female friendship, marriage, and desire in a voice that is loudly empathetic, unapologetic, and true. While examining the dichotomies inside of herself, she leads us to consider the flaws in society, showing us the beauty, resilience, chaos, and wild within us all.
More about the book:
I DON’T DO DISABILITY was named a Fall Most Anticipated Memoir by Indigo and 49th Shelf, appeared in The Toronto Star’s Holiday gift-buying guide, was listed as a book to read by CBC on International Day of Persons with Disabilities, and recommended as a Best Nonfiction Book of 2024 by the editors of The Miramichi Reader.
🏠November 22 is National Housing Day
In recognition of National Housing Day on November 22, the DSO Housing Navigators are excited to share a special video created in collaboration with self-advocates, their support teams and the DSO Communications team.
This video highlights the critical importance of inclusive housing policies for everyone in Canada, especially for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. It underscores the need for accessible and inclusive housing solutions that foster equity, dignity, and independence for all.
To complement the video, you will find here a resource with practical tips on how you can advocate for inclusive and accessible housing policies in your community. Whether you’re engaging with policymakers, raising awareness, or supporting local initiatives, every effort helps to move us closer to a Canada where everyone has a place to call home.
The DSO Housing Navigators hope this initiative inspires ongoing support and action—not just on National Housing Day, but every day—to create communities where everyone has a place to call home.
They invite you to watch the video and share it widely to help raise awareness and support for this vital cause.
☎️Community Living Ontario Wants to Hear From You
📣International Day of Persons with Disabilities is coming up on December 3
Join City of Ottawa on December 3 from 8:30 to 9 am at Ottawa City Hall to celebrate with the raising of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities flag for the first time in Ottawa.
Learn more: https://bit.ly/4hQn7Js
🚌Para Transpo Talk
OC Transpo is hosting their next round of Para Transpo Talk. If you’re a customer, family member, companion or support person, come out in person and share your comments on how to improve the service. Everyone is welcome. There’s no need to register in advance, just drop in. We have the full list of dates, times and locations. https://bit.ly/4epSKqo
🏫Reflecting on our Practice: Ten Ways Schools Can Foster Belonging Among Students With and Without Disabilities
Suggested reading by OIFN: Ontario Independent Facilitation Network
Check out this reflection guide from the PROGRESS Center at the American Institutes for Research. Although the questions are asked from an education lens, they can easily be applied to thinking about our communities and social groups.
https://promotingprogress.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/Fostering_Belonging_Handout.pdf
🌻An Evening of Story Telling and Advocacy with Families Matter Co-Operative
Come join Families Matter Co-Operative and professional storyteller Kim Kilpatrick, who has been totally blind since birth, for an inspiring evening of stories, conversation and networking. Les Moulins La Fayette on Thursday, November 7, from 7 to 9 PM. Register while space is available: https://www.familiesmattercoop.ca/events/8al77eq18ifuetij8o3m7xjm31a933
✊The Audacity of Inclusion: Fighting for the Equality of Persons Labelled Intellectually Disabled
Inclusion Canada recommends this book:
The Audacity of Inclusion: Fighting for the Equality of Persons Labelled Intellectually Disabled
Details on the book can be found here: 👇
https://books.friesenpress.com/store/title/119734000433366040/Dulcie-McCallum-The-Audacity-of-Inclusion
« The Audacity of Inclusion cracks open the vault of injustices perpetrated against people who have an intellectual disability, helping shatter preconceptions and opening new ways of seeing people who are forced to live with a legally sanctioned label. »
