This week Twitter users lit up in outrage at a story that put ableism on display. But for the disabled community it was no surprise to hear that someone had been touched, again, without their permission.
On Sunday, Star reporter Bailey Martens tweeted about her experience with someone grabbing her wheelchair and pushing her half a block, despite her protests — an incident one disability advocate said is a microcosm of the systemic ableism that exists in Canada.
In the comments of the tweet, other wheelchair users shared countless stories of similar incidents happening to them. Some shared photos of wheelchairs equipped with spikes on the push handles to deter unwanted touching.
Sarah Mercer, 27, told the Star she has been moved without her consent numerous times.
Incidents range in severity: One person, she said, believed they were genuinely helping her and moved her slightly. Another, though, grabbed her wheelchair and ran with her “like a bat out of hell,” Mercer recalled.
Moving someone without their permission is far different from asking someone if they need help, Mercer added.
“I’m never offended when someone asks if I need help, but some people are — especially if they’re doing something incredibly basic, but in a different way than an able bodied person would,” she said.
The chance that being moved could happen again has given Mercer anxiety about leaving her home at all — an issue she hadn’t previously struggled with. Now, Mercer typically leaves home at night, when there are fewer people out.
She compared the stress of leaving home to the fear women can feel when they go out alone at night. According to Statistics Canada, disabled Canadians face nearly twice the rate of violence compared to those who are able bodied.
“It really cements the feeling that I’m completely unable to defend myself.”
Despite Mercer and other disabled people’s numerous stories, there was a defensive tone to many of the Twitter responses from able bodied people.
Ableism is so deep rooted people have a hard time seeing when they are perpetuating it. Touching someone’s equipment or moving it is symptomatic of a culture where disabled people are not seen as human, said disability advocate Sarah Jama. “We’re seen as burdens to the state, we’re seen as a problem.”
Jama pointed to some of the historical roots of the issue in Canada, citing an Ontario institution for people with developmental disabilities, originally known as Orillia Asylum for Idiots, which opened in 1876 and only closed in 2009.
“Even though these institutions don’t really exist in the same form today, we have remnants of it in (societal) structures,” said Jama, who is the executive director of the Disability Justice Network of Ontario.
Throughout the pandemic, disabled people have been the hardest hit, Jama said, partially because “we’re not seen as people with our own autonomy,” and are not considered during decision making.
David Lepofsky, a lawyer and disability advocate, told the Star “To some extent, we’re seen or treated as public property by a minority (of people).”
He said provinces should introduce mandatory disability education in schools focused on inclusion and awareness. Updated education was among several suggestions released earlier this month in a list of recommendations to bring education standards in line with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA).
“Every grade of kids that got this education — that would be the next generation of kids who grow up to be employers and people on the street,” said Lepofsky, who is also chair of the AODA Alliance, a disability advocacy group.
Still, I added, education won’t solve everything. The message sent to disabled people over the years, Lepofsky said, is that they are a “secondary class of people.”
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