Ableism Prompts a New Awareness Campaign

Ableism is an issue. From inadequate designs to being left out or looked down upon, ableism prevents many from being included in everyday life. The Office of the BC Human Rights Commissioner and Disability Alliance BC have joined forces to address the issue and created a new awareness campaign called Rewrite the Rules.

 

TRANSCRIPT

Ableism Prompts a New Awareness Campaign

 

00:06
Time again for DDA's Encouraging Abilities podcast. I'm your host, DDA Communications Manager, Evan Kelly. So thanks again for listening in. Today we're talking about ableism. Now what is that? Simply put, it's discrimination in favour of able-bodied people or people without disabilities. Through that lens, our guests today are Kasari Govinder, BC's Human Rights Commissioner since 2019, and joining her

00:29
is Selena Dewar, an advocate with Disability Alliance BC. Now a little bit about the commissioner. As an independent officer of the legislature, the commissioner is uniquely positioned to ensure human rights in BC are protected, respected, and advanced on a systemic level throughout our society. And Selena is a disability advocate who is a person who identifies with a disability. And although she is not currently practicing law, she does have her education in law.

00:59
She is currently working as a law clinic assistant with the Disability Alliance. So this month is also Community Inclusion Month and Disability Employment Awareness Month. So there's a lot to talk about when it comes to inclusion and ableism. This month, this is why we've got Kasari and Selena here today. The Office of the Human Rights Commissioner launched a new campaign called Rewrite the Rules, a campaign designed to raise awareness, deepen understanding, foster dialogue, and spur action

01:29
to people with disabilities. So thank you for after all that thank you for joining us today. My pleasure. Thanks for having us. So Kasari tell me a little bit about yourself. How did you get involved in being a champion for human rights here in BC? I have spent my career and in fact my life really working on these issues to some extent.

01:52
I grew up in a family that was deeply committed to human rights issues and it was a common dinner table conversation with a real focus in our context on racism and sexism. My father grew up in apartheid South Africa and that side of my family is Indian, so experienced a great deal of racism and the impacts of systemic racism. So those were issues that inspired me from an early age and I have a lot of background and have spent my legal career.

02:21
working on equality issues in a number of different contexts, again, including gender, disability work, race and indigeneity issues, and so on. And so now tell me about the Rewrite the Rules campaign.

02:38
This is a public awareness campaign that we launched this year to unpack the concept of ableism and more specifically try to start to undo some of the systemic discrimination that people with disabilities face in our society. Now we talked about, you've also mentioned in some of this campaign about unwritten rules. What are some of those unwritten rules?

03:04
Yeah, we called our campaign Rewrite the Rules and the idea is that ableism is really often a set of unwritten rules that we don't even consciously see or speak about, but that we still follow to a large extent and that that's the kind of society that disables people. The idea here is really that disability to try to...

03:32
So we begin, especially as people without disabilities, to understand that disabilities are not inherent in the person. They're the way in which society creates obstacles to the participation of folks who are not typically abled. And so it creates an exclusion that is really about how we build the world around us rather than what's happening for an individual in that space.

03:59
Yeah, and so how much of the responsibility is with individuals in sort of addressing the unwritten rules, and how much responsibility with government or institutions, even people like organizations like us, or businesses? Who owns most of the responsibility here?

04:15
I think it's across the board. I think everybody has some role to play here. And I think it ranges again from actions that concern individuals, and those are important. So, you know, if you're an employer or you're a service provider or you're a housing provider, you have obligations under the Human Rights Code to accommodate people with disabilities and people with diverse ranges of abilities to the point of undue hardship. So you need to do everything that's reasonable to do.

04:45
So you need to build that ramp or to create a flexible work schedule or to accommodate doctor's appointments or whatever you need to do for that individual to create a safe and inclusive workspace or housing space or so on. So that's an important part of the human rights landscape. But our obligations don't end there because if we're just dealing with discrimination on an individual basis, we'll never actually transform our society to take away, to...

05:14
these disabilities in the sense these obstacles to participating in our broader social fabric and our economic world and so on. So what if we created flexible work schedules across the board where possible? That's not possible in every workplace, I appreciate that. But in many workplaces, we do, we have very rigid schedules because that's just always the way we've done it as opposed to thinking about things differently in order to ensure that a wider range.

05:43
of folks are included in that space. So that's the kind of systems change that this campaign around rewrite the rules is trying to get at. Now, Selena, tell me a little bit about yourself. You're a tax advocate for Disability Alliance BC. I previously worked as a tax advocate where I helped people to file taxes so that they got the benefits that they are entitled to. So Disability Alliance BC for your reader, your listeners who may not know.

06:09
is a cross facility organization that's over 40 years old. And it supports people throughout the entire province to live with dignity and independence, to participate equally in fully in society. We do that through our systemic advocacy, but also through our advocacy programs like the tax program that you mentioned, and our law clinic and our advocacy access program that helps people apply for benefits. And so I've been working with the ABC for six years, more than that.

06:39
helping people with their taxes and to apply for the disability tax credit. But now I help with our law clinic, talking to clients and helping them connect with our lawyers. Well, that sounds good. So what is your role with the Rewrite the Rules campaign? On behalf of our organization, I actually participated in the campaign and kind of gave feedback to some of the sort of draft concepts.

07:08
that the commissioner's office had put forward. And basically, our executive director was looking for someone from our office who had both lived experience and direct client contact that would give sort of a disability lens to reviewing these things. And so that's how I got involved. And it was a pleasure being involved for a number of different reasons.

07:36
Now, one of the things that Kasari mentioned is one of the, in the last question that I asked her, she's mentioned, you know, we have to build that ramp. And I recently had an experience with a friend of mine who is in a wheelchair. We were at a club downtown and, you know, he was coming in to do some photography work that I hired him for. And he comes in the front door and that's great. And then we both, you know, we both grabbed a beer and we looked out the back and low and beat it.

08:06
the only way out the back is stairs. So he can get in the front but he can't get out the back. From your point of view, how is BC doing in terms of confronting ableism and dealing with it? We have a long way to go actually and that's why I was so excited to hear that the human, the Commissioner's office was taking on this issue of ableism and the unwritten rules, both as an advocate and as a person with disabilities because

08:36
The type of situation you just described with your colleague is something that I have seen myself, particularly when I go to socialize with friends who are in wheelchairs or even for myself. A lot of times when you go into spaces, I mean, I can't even get up to sit at a lot of the tables because they're all bar height. And I think just in the sense of physical spaces, there are still problems. Even the ramps that exist are not great or they're in scary places.

09:05
dirty alleys or whatever. But I think as the commissioner comments allude to, this ableism is a lot broader than just the physical spaces as well. Ableism is in the way that we think and the way that we relate to people who have cognitive disabilities as well or mental health disabilities. So I wanna put that out there. And I wonder if I can comment on some of the ways that people...

09:34
can resolve ableism. You were asking about whose responsibility it is, and I'm wondering if I can share my thoughts. Yeah, absolutely, go ahead. So I think as the commissioner mentioned, everyone does have important roles. But I think as with anyone who has been marginalized, I think the people who are not directly harmed by ableism do have a duty to educate themselves and not put that whole burden on the shoulders of folks with disabilities.

10:03
I think when we think about solutions to physical ableism and other systemic ableism, we need to make sure that we're relying on the experience of people with a variety of disabilities, physical, cognitive, visible, invisible, and also with intersecting identities, because so often in the human rights context, it feels like people are in silos. But I think we know, and the commissioner's office will know, that many people experience various barriers, disability and perhaps gender-related barriers.

10:33
cultural and racial related barriers as well. Organizations like ours have a, and even the commissioner's office, I think we have a role in bringing issues and solutions to the attention of decision makers and in educating the public. And governments have a responsibility to ensure that disabled people have accessible, meaningful ways to address discrimination when it arises.

10:58
Selena, I just wanted to echo much of what you said, but just to emphasize the two points which I think are so important. And I'm grateful that you raised that intersectionality point because I think it's absolutely key. And we didn't get deeply into it in our campaign in the interest of creating sort of a more simple way to engage on the issues or straightforward way to engage on the issues, but it couldn't be more important to.

11:27
undoing all forms of discrimination is to understand that these issues are multifaceted and that people experience these issues in different ways. So gender has a key role here, race and indigeneity, people with disabilities who, you know, women with disabilities face much higher rates of gender-based violence, for example. Indigenous women face higher rates, so Indigenous women with disabilities may face even higher rates.

11:55
So understanding those nuances are vital. So I appreciate that point. And I appreciate the flag as well about the level of responsibility to people who don't have disabilities to engage with these issues and the responsibility to educate ourselves. And I do wanna put as well an emphasis on what government's obligation is in this context. I do think our campaign here really highlights everyone's responsibilities, particularly those who...

12:23
who have power over spaces and systems, as employers, as housing providers and so on. But it is a key responsibility of government to take this form of discrimination just as seriously as the other forms of discrimination. This is in fact the area in which there are the most complaints around discrimination that go to the human rights tribunal. So it has particular poignancy or weight in the context of the human rights analysis.

12:53
Yeah, and it's interesting, I've been doing a bunch of podcasts lately around accessibility and ableism. And the interesting thing is, and you highlight some really, really key points at how complex this issue can actually be, and how many intersections there are. But even when it comes to simple accessibility, this is something that is largely going to affect almost everybody. These aren't necessarily going to be...

13:20
left to singular groups or anything, because as we all age we all have problems getting around. We've got to look at how we do things and how we design things and how we build things from a universal lens rather than just, oh we need some stairs here, throw in some stairs, let's do, we got to sort of open that mindset of humanity, from my point of view at least anyway.

13:47
Absolutely. And I think that's part of what we're trying to do with this campaign is shift the way that folks see the world around us. So again, particularly aimed at people who don't aren't experiencing disabilities or don't identify as somebody with a disability. It's not just taking steps ABC. It's actually learning to see the world a different way.

14:09
and to see the obstacles that we build in that we don't have to build in to our society and to our built environment. As an advocate and as a person with disabilities, I'd like to point out to you that people, it is very important to think of universal design in terms of the physical space, but I think that concept can be applied a lot more broadly to make events more accessible to, for example, people with sensory disabilities or...

14:36
information processing related disabilities. I think part of my interest in this campaign is also to, and my input into the campaign was also to remind people that disability is extremely broad. So we have people with intersections identities, but we also, disability itself is extremely broad. And often it's focused on the visible disability, but there are a lot of folks who are experiencing ableism whose disabilities are not as obvious.

15:07
Yeah, absolutely. And it's it's it's one of those things where, you know, we operate.

15:14
Jobs West, it's one of our social enterprise. It's an employment service for people with developmental disabilities. So what we do is we work with clients and we work with the employer so that the employer you know understands what the clients needs are and it just generates successful employment opportunities. And one of the big things, and you talk about you know creating an accessible environment, it's not just sort of physical, is that you know businesses tend to think that it costs a lot of money.

15:44
to do that, to adapt or to change things so that it becomes more universal. And the truth is it really doesn't. It doesn't cost anymore. And what we find with people who are neurodiverse and employed...

16:01
It's actually a benefit to the business' bottom line. There's better retention, there's longer employment. I mean, the list goes on. So I absolutely agree with that. Now we've been talking about government responsibility, and it seems like a lot of levels of government right now these days are creating new accessibility rules and laws. And BC has some new legislation. The city of Vancouver launched this year its first part of an accessibility plan. On the surface, this seems really good. I mean, I know governments want to do things

16:31
to look good and get re-elected, but are these steps in the right direction? Is it enough? I ask that to either of you.

16:40
Sorry, do you? No, go ahead. I will say as a person, both an advocate and a person with a disability, I mean, obviously, it's good to have accessibility legislation in place and I think there is some promising potential. However, I believe some of the...

17:08
the tools that are within that legislation may not even sort of be in place for up to 10 years from now. And the legislation doesn't apply to sort of every type of service or every situation a person with disabilities may encounter. And as it happens, I think we're still waiting for some rules around how the government expects the bodies that the legislation applies to.

17:32
to make things less ableist or less discriminatory. And so it seems like a really long process. And frankly, I'm not sure how much teeth there is in it, if that makes sense. And these are issues that our office is very interested in and because we provided feedback to government before, and my understanding is it was not applied. And there were other organizations as well. So is it a good thing?

18:02
Sure. Does it go far enough? Not for sure. Maybe towards a no, but I'm happy to hear from Kasari as well. Yeah, I mean, I think your summary there at the end of, is it a good thing? Yes. Does it go far enough? You know, probably not. I think the long timeline is important and some of the limitations of how the scope of the legislation that it doesn't

18:31
that the scope isn't broad enough yet and in hopes that we will get there. But I think the bread of systemic discrimination facing people with disabilities is not fully addressed here. And the sort of unwritten rule side of things and the way in which our societies are designed to be ableist and could be more designed with universal design, I think they're left off.

18:59
This is a bit more of the kind of maybe perhaps higher than just the lowest hanging fruit, but still in that realm of what's more doable for government to start out with. And I think there's there's definitely more to do on that front. Yeah, no, obviously, you're one of the when it comes to ableism.

19:18
poverty is a huge problem with the disability community, obviously because some of that means finding employment and keeping employment can be difficult and that it becomes ableist for organizations or businesses not to hire people with disabilities. Now the federal...

19:38
that new Canadian disability benefits. It went through a second reading the other day, and it's going through a vote today, as I'm understanding. But there's still lots more work to do in terms of getting that new benefit going. Is that a better step in the right direction? I mean, getting more benefits is obviously good for those who need it, but that doesn't really, to me, in my mind, sort of address

20:08
of that puts ableism in place to begin with. You're right. I think you're right about that. Also, I mean, any time there's a financial benefit, we have to ask ourselves, is everyone who might benefit from it actually getting it? Because I can't comment specifically on the disability benefit you just mentioned, but there are.

20:35
instances where folks who receive persons with disabilities assistance, for example, end up having to give up some income that they would otherwise be entitled to, such as those who have worked and gained EI. Right now, they have to give up their, like there's a call back. And so that's something that we are advocating against because it just reinforces the poverty of many folks with disabilities. And we have consulted with Kusari's office on that point.

21:03
which is great. So, sorry, did you have anything to add on this? Yeah, I mean, I was going to say that that we fully support the push to claw back the claw backs, if I can say it that way. Claw backs are a problematic piece of the picture where benefits are concerned. And, you know, so just talking about the benefits presents an incomplete picture of what the actual overall financial benefit is.

21:33
talking about income assistance of various kinds and benefits of various kinds is an important part of the conversation around poverty. I agree it doesn't change the system as a whole and it also doesn't address discrimination that flows on the basis of poverty. So another piece of the puzzle, definitely not a complete answer, but also a piece of the puzzle is to, is to, to prohibit discrimination on the basis of poverty.

21:59
because we know that people with disabilities, as we've just said, disproportionately live in poverty, as do many other marginalized groups, as do Indigenous people disproportionately live in poverty and so on. So part of our picture around systemic equality generally, and as it applies to people with disabilities, is to prevent discrimination on the basis of poverty or social condition like homelessness or appearance of homelessness. And yet that is not.

22:23
enshrined in law in BC. It is in some other jurisdictions, but our human rights code is silent on the issue of poverty. In fact, most of our domestic rights protections are silent. Anything that applies in BC is silent on the issue of poverty. So I think, you know, we've designed these tools to protect and promote human rights for those most marginalized among us, and yet...

22:47
we leave out this huge and important group of folks living in poverty and experiencing poverty for all the reasons that we've just talked about. And it's entirely legal to kick someone out of your store because they appear homeless or living in poverty. It's entirely legal to follow someone around a store for that reason, whereas it's not on the basis of race or disability. Directly,

23:11
But those things often become very difficult to prove. So we've been advocating for quite some time along, many in the community, to include that prohibition in the Human Rights Code. Now, Selena, I want to ask you a little bit more of a personal question. I mean, you'd feel free if you don't want to answer that at all. But what sort of ableism have you experienced in your past? Oh, sure. So for context's sake, I don't mind explaining that I have.

23:38
cerebral palsy and it affects mostly, at least externally, it affects my walking. So I use crutches and the ableism that I experience, unfortunately, at least on a monthly basis, is not more frequently. It can be experiences like I mentioned where I will go somewhere and decide not to go there because I can't even sit at the tables because you have to climb up onto a...

24:04
stool or in transit, although you're supposed to, you know, they're supposed to get close to the curb, they're supposed to lower the ramp. I often, you know, end up having to navigate huge gaps and drivers that are less than thrilled if I try to remind them that they're supposed to do that or, you know, I've had a driver yell at me when I asked to use the ramp because he said that it was only for people in wheelchairs.

24:32
And those are just a few examples. But there are also sort of everyday situations of what I would call microaggressions, where people, even if they don't mean to, they're causing grief. For example, I sometimes wish I could walk around with my resume taped to my head, because I've had people say to me, I'm so glad you got out today. It's almost like they wanna give me a sticker for tying my shoes. And so...

25:02
uh it's extremely frustrating and kind of demoralizing and sometimes it's i mean it it doesn't make you it makes me feel small and so even with my experience and my abilities um these kinds of things happen quite frequently um i've certainly experienced ableism oh um albeit um not

25:27
super overt, but ableism in the workplace scenario, not in my current position, but in others. So hopefully that answers your question. What that does say though, and what I hope to convey here is that ableism is so entrenched in our society that there are a lot of assumptions just on seeing someone with a pair of crutches, for example.

25:51
And frankly, my experience both personally and in encountering many people with disabilities is that we are incredibly resilient and incredibly adept. And frankly, with all of the ableism in society and the times that we are refused the ability to work or those sorts of things, we are losing a lot of productivity and creativity. Even if you want to look at sort of a bottom line scenario, we're losing so much just by excluding people with disabilities and other marginalized folks.

26:20
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, especially when it comes to the the neuro diverse community, experts will tell us that, you know, that's a huge untapped pool of employees and ready to go. And and to your comments about people saying, oh, I'm so glad you got out of the house. Do you do you subtly remind them that you're educated in law and you did everything? I don't have time to do that. They usually do this to me in the crosswalk. I said people follow me in the crosswalk while I'm trying to get out.

26:50
of traffic. So I'd like to, but I don't have time. Yeah, that must be very, very frustrating. It is. Thank you. So we've been talking a lot about poverty and how ableism, I think, contributes to that. I'm not sure if you'd like to discuss the topic I've made. That's something that's come up a lot. Concerns that some people feel like they don't have any other way out, except for...

27:20
ending their lives. To me this is concerning to say the least. Do you have something to think about that? It's heartbreaking and you know I'm sure my office will have its own comments so to speak but just working as an assistant for the law clinic I have actually heard from people who either feel like they don't have any other options or

27:50
in at least one case where they, you know, they don't have a lot of resources and they have complex health needs. And their doctor suggested it as an option without them having brought it up. And that person told me that.

28:06
that they felt horrible and that the trust was broken between them and their practitioner as a result. But hearing those things, those are, I can specifically think of like two or three people I've heard from, but I have a feeling it happens a lot more than that. And both from an advocacy perspective and as a person with a disability, it's horrifying and heartbreaking. I can't imagine even bringing that up to somebody as an option.

28:32
To me that's absolutely bizarre. Any comments from you, Kasari, on that? I won't comment on that because the jurisdiction of my office is provincial, so I'm not commenting on matters within the federal decision making realm. Okay, that's fair enough. Sorry. So how can, for both of you, how can organizations like DDA better address the needs of the disability community? Well, I think...

29:01
our office has found that collaborating with other organizations can be helpful because it can give you ideas of how you might resolve issues or how you might connect better with clients to figure out how to fix a problem. These are things that you, by the way, I assume that your office is already doing, but maybe just needs to do more of, I don't know. But using your relative power alone or in collaboration with others.

29:28
to ensure that the needs and goals of people with disabilities are heard and applied by decision makers. And then I would say educating families and caregivers and the general public about ableism and how they can make changes to address it. And most importantly, something that I think already happens, but get client feedback, not just from people in their lives, but also from people directly, because it's the only way you'll actually address any of these issues properly, I think.

29:58
And I think from my perspective, the question is really how we can support you to do, support community organizations working in the disability space to achieve their goals. So where we can provide some amplification for the policy or changes that may be afoot and may be asked for, that's a role that we can play as Luna discussed earlier in terms of benefits callbacks.

30:28
of amplify as I say or provide some kind of bridge. We occupy a somewhat unique space. We're not in the civil society non-profit realm. We're not within government. We're independent from government. So we can provide some more of that role and certainly what can help us in our work on ableism and has helped us immensely in this campaign.

30:51
is to be able to have those collaborations, to be able to build these relationships that we did with Disability Alliance and other organizations to provide us with just invaluable advice and guidance and direction as we developed this campaign so that we ensure that the work that we're doing on Ibalism is actually reflecting.

31:13
lived experience of folks in this community and service providers who see these issues every day and can reflect those experiences back to us. Now is that something the your office does often in terms of like collaboration with other organizations? We're working through we've my office has existed for just over three years and we've done uh worked through collaborations through all of our project work but in different ways and so we're still in that process of figuring out

31:41
Which of these models seems to be the most successful? Where are we being the most respectful of people's time and energy that are contributing to us, but also making that support as meaningful as possible so that we're able to reflect back what we hear. So yes, the short answer is we're doing these kinds of collaborations and community embedded work in every aspect of our work, but also learning as we go for sure and trying to incorporate those learnings into the next project we do.

32:09
Sounds good. Now, Selena, do you have anything else to add before we wrap things up in terms of your own experience and how we're addressing ableism here in BC? I think I would just say that I think it was a fantastic opportunity to be to be a part of this campaign, and I would like to see the Commissioner's office, you know.

32:35
similar campaigns perhaps around issues that relate in some way or are linked to ableism as well. I think anything that we can do on a larger scale to raise awareness of these things is important. I think that the collaboration we have been able to do with the commissioner's office and with other organizations around the province was very helpful.

33:01
I haven't, there was a question I think about how did you find the experience collaborating together and you know it was very enlightening and encouraging and we would like to see more. That sounds good. Kasari, anything else to add as a final thought? No, just just so thank you for for inviting us on today and the opportunity to speak about this campaign. Really grateful for that.

33:26
Yeah, I'll mention that again. I think that about covers it then. I'd like to thank Kasari Govindar, BC's Human Rights Commissioner, and Salina Dewar, an advocate with the Disability Alliance BC. Today we've been talking about ableism in BC and their new campaign called Rewriting the Rules. You can find out more at bchumanrights.ca. Thank you both for joining us today. Thank you so much. And I'm your host, Evan Kelly. Thanks for listening.