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Ontario Tech acknowledges the lands and people of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation.

We are thankful to be welcome on these lands in friendship. The lands we are situated on are covered by the Williams Treaties and are the traditional territory of the Mississaugas, a branch of the greater Anishinaabeg Nation, including Algonquin, Ojibway, Odawa and Pottawatomi. These lands remain home to many Indigenous nations and peoples.

We acknowledge this land out of respect for the Indigenous nations who have cared for Turtle Island, also called North America, from before the arrival of settler peoples until this day. Most importantly, we acknowledge that the history of these lands has been tainted by poor treatment and a lack of friendship with the First Nations who call them home.

This history is something we are all affected by because we are all treaty people in Canada. We all have a shared history to reflect on, and each of us is affected by this history in different ways. Our past defines our present, but if we move forward as friends and allies, then it does not have to define our future.

Learn more about Indigenous Education and Cultural Services

Ontario Tech’s virtual speaker series to advance disability rights around the world continues

Community invited to learn from experts at Advocates Assembly: Disability Research from the Ground Up

To position persons with disability as agents in their narratives and experts of their own experiences, event organizers commissioned professional artist Anne K Abbott to create promotional materials for the speaker series. Learn more about Abbott at https://annekabbott.com/.
To position persons with disability as agents in their narratives and experts of their own experiences, event organizers commissioned professional artist Anne K Abbott to create promotional materials for the speaker series. Learn more about Abbott at https://annekabbott.com/.

Approximately 12 per cent of individuals worldwide live with a disability. Many are in developing countries or in places of conflict, where there are barriers to education, health care and other basic services. Many face violence and discrimination, and are deprived of their right to live independently. Persons with disability face architectural, technological, informational, and attitudinal barriers – enacted in policy and practice – that hinder their full and equal participation in their communities.

In the second forum of a four-part virtual speaker series hosted by Ontario Tech University’s Institute for Disability and Rehabilitation Research (IDRR), leading disability and advocacy experts will discuss how to mobilize disability research to meet and exceed accessibility standards – to build spaces and services that meaningfully anticipate embodied and mental differences.

The series, Advocates Assembly: Disability Research from the Ground Up, connects IDRR researchers to community-based contacts and research principles, and introduces IDRR research to the wider disability justice seeking community. Disability justice activists and disability-centred service providers will speak to the lived experiences, in-community conditions, and most pressing needs of disability populations, in an effort to frame the future of disability and rehabilitation research.

Part 2, Imagining Accessible Worlds (Wednesday, October 5 from 6 to 7:30 p.m.) will feature:

  • Jennifer Chambers, Empowerment Council
  • Maggie Doherty-Gilbert, Durham Deaf Services
  • Kathleen Odell, Independent Living Canada
  • Fran Odette, George Brown College
Upcoming events in the series (all times Eastern):
  • Centering Disability in Health Care (Wednesday, November 2 from noon to 1:30 p.m.)
  • Advocating for Disability Justice (Wednesday, December 7 from 6 to 7:30 p.m.)

Anyone in the community can register for any or all of the events.  Live captioning and American Sign Language (ASL) translation will be provided.   

This series is funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Connection Grant, and is jointly sponsored by Ontario Tech’s Faculty of Social Science and Humanities, and Faculty of Health Sciences, as well as the Canadian Chiropractic Memorial College.