Good morning.
Bonjour, mesdames et messieurs. Je m'appelle Jean Ann Ledwell.
Normally I would be speaking in Toronto, where I currently live, but owing to a very grave family situation here, I find myself at home for a welcome change, and thanks to Madame Lafrance, I am able to speak to you today.
Given the fact that I haven't had access to my computer or my notes, I determined I would speak to you on my own behalf today, and given what you've heard from my colleagues here, beginning with Marie, I think that for a change I will not speak at the macro and the systemic level. Rather, I will speak to you as a person at the micro level and perhaps, through my personal experience, put some flesh and bones on what has already been said so eloquently.
I would like to underline, however, that I said many of the same things myself in the late seventies and early eighties when I was directing library services for persons with disabilities and struggling to have equity and citizenship recognized. And it is profoundly disturbing and distressing for me, at 60, to be saying the same things to you that I was saying at 18 and 19 and 20.
That being said, while we have some superb examples of progress, in the overall picture the progress has been less than stellar.
I think most of you know it, if you've read it--the study last year that your own government agency helped to support, An Unequal Playing Field, which was released in November 2005. I brought the reference for you. It will really underline for you most of what I would want to say as a person with legal blindness. From the point of view of persons who are blind or legally blind or who suffer, as I do, a profound vision loss but who still.... You know, you're a beautiful blur. I do things with my nose.
But more importantly, what I want to underline today is what has been alluded to as the necessity of defining yourself as unemployable in order not to starve. And most of my co-citizens, with one or another physical limit or social limit of some kind, have had to do that in order not to starve.
I think you know that the statistics are absolutely criminal in terms of the levels of poverty. Most blind people live on less than $10,000 a year. Slightly more of them live on less than $20,000. In our society today, I think we all know how little that can procure. And the point has been made eloquently that unless you have access to some meaningful employment and can in some way access money through paid employment, your ability to participate as a citizen in this country is severely hampered.
I will leave that for the moment. I just wanted to be up front and clear.
The other point I would want to make before I leave that is to say that in general the employment equity programs certainly have not served us well in our sector. I will give you a personal example.
I went off to apply for a position that had the usual, “Persons welcome with all sorts of... Employment-equity-seeking groups welcome to apply.” I got to this venue and I had to walk up three flights of stairs. Fortunately for me, my personal issue is vision. I could walk up those three flights of stairs, but it became very clear to me very quickly that what the employer really meant was that they wanted to diversify in terms of ethnicity. They did not have any notion at all of diversifying in terms of persons with differing abilities.
And that's something I want to underline here. We need to be looking at things from the point of view of differing abilities. Unfortunately, our society has been organized in terms of uni-ability. We all have the same physical structure, mental structure, social structure. We can all do the same things the same way.
The whole medical model that Marie alluded to has rendered that paramount in the thinking that's gone on.
To share my experience, what I'd like to say is this: right now I am a 60-year-old woman, with advanced degrees to my credit, who's worked professionally in four provinces in two languages. Because I was injured on the job through lack of accommodation, I find myself unemployable. With my stellar record of leadership in the fields that I've been involved in, I'm unemployable.
I never in my life expected to arrive at this point. I had to fight to get into university. Only when I became a provincial scholar, all of a sudden, the residence was available to me. I had to fight to get a job even though I couldn't own or drive a car--and I would say this is an area where we need some collaboration. In an economy where we're trying to go green, to have every application, every job notice, say that one must drive or own a car or vehicle.... I would tell people, and I've done this in the last three years, that it's been my largest obstacle that I must own my own vehicle, that I must drive, that I must own my own vehicle and have a licence. Can we not conceive of a different way of getting around? I've done the Matterhorn; I've travelled alone internationally. I know how to use a bus or a taxi. In terms of sheer economics, owning and maintaining and running a car cost the last organization I was working with about $8,000 a year. Let me tell you, that takes a lot of buses, a lot of public transit, and a lot of taxis to get there.
The other big thing I would like to say is that the computer, which has become an ally—certainly for persons who are blind—has also become our worst enemy, because now there's no need for clerical support, which of course is how I became injured. The denial of any support, any human support, is now paramount, and even lawyers are beginning to realize that asking senior executives and senior professional people to do all their own clerical work is a waste of money.
I really want to say that the other big thing that's problematic is still the condescending attitude towards persons with disabilities and the lack of expectation of them—you know, the self-fulfilling prophecy issue: you're not expected to do well in school, you're not expected to perform well on the job, and you're not expected to last. You're not expected to be there; you're not expected to be present.
When we were doing a presentation recently, I was very amused to find that when we were talking out about accessibility and universal design for public buildings and hotels and so forth, everyone was assuming that the only persons with disabilities who would be in those venues would be guests. No one thought for a moment that the person might be the manager of the hotel or might be a wait staff or might be the clerk at the front desk. There was no question that people with disabilities would be employed in these institutions.
These are the personal things I've experienced that are critical to people being able to participate in our society.
I'm very dry, and I should have had some water, but I need to say one other thing: how's my time?