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A podcast from Statistics Canada where we meet the people behind the data and explore the stories behind the numbers. This first episode of Eh Sayers is a heart-felt discussion on disability in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Listen to the Eh Sayers podcast to meet the people behind the data and explore the stories behind the numbers. Join us as we meet with experts from Statistics Canada and from across the nation to ask and answer the questions that matter to Canadians.
Talk about the barriers, not the disability: Activity limitations and COVID-19
Anonymous 1: Hello, I'm blind, and last year, 2020, when COVID started, it affected my
husband and I. My husband, who's bipolar, became more manic with all the changes
brought on by COVID, and I as a blind person was not able to cope with his erratic
behaviour and had him brought to a hospital for treatment.
Anonymous 2: So, service dog training, like we go to malls, we go to parks--places to get
them used to different things, but with the COVID and everything, it's like, I don't want to risk
myself going out but like sometimes I'm like I kinda have to in order to train.
Anonymous 1: People talk about online shopping, online delivery, online meetings, and of
course, they are very convenient, but for blind people, we use screen reading software, we
find that a lot of websites and online apps are still not fully accessible.
Tegan: Welcome to the very first episode of Eh Sayers. It’s a podcast from Statistics
Canada, where we meet the people behind the data and explore the stories behind the
numbers. I’m your host, Tegan. If you heard the preview we released June 3, you can skip
ahead to about 11 and a half minutes in if you’d prefer to only hear the new content.
Today, we’re talking about disability. According to the 2017 Canadian Survey on Disability,
more than 6 million Canadians aged 15 and over report having a disability. That’s about 1 in
5 Canadians. So what do we mean when we say persons with disabilities?
Tony: Well, it can mean many things for many people, and some people will will have
activity limitations and probably will not even think of themselves as being a person with a
disability. We mean people with visible and invisible conditions that may affect them in their
daily life or in their daily work.
Tegan: That’s Tony Labillois.
Tony: My name is Tony Labillois. I'm the Director for public sector Statistics Division at
Statistics Canada, and I'm also the champion for persons with disabilities in our
organization since 2002. And I'm visually impaired since I was born. I have low vision. And
for me it's normal vision.
Tegan: 1.5 million Canadians aged 15 years and over have a seeing disability, like Tony.
What do you mean by invisible conditions?
Tony: You see, immediately, when you meet someone, like you will see that I have dancing
eyes, if you see me, you notice that my eyes are different. So you know that I'm visually
impaired or there's something different. But there's a lot of invisible disabilities, there's a lot
of people where you will meet the person and you could not know that they have an activity
limitation. And think about things like learning disability, mental health challenge, or even
pain, chronic pain or hypersensitivity to the environment. All those things are affecting us as
human beings, either for an episode of our life or permanently. And that's what can be
included in persons with disabilities. But it doesn't mean that the person would recognize
himself or herself as having a disability or being part of that group. It's a question of
acceptance or a question of perception of our experiences... yeah our experiences.
Tegan: Could you talk a bit more about that? Why a person might not identify themselves as
having a disability?
Tony: Yes, absolutely. I remember the time that when I was not even sure if I should self
identify, or I wasn't sure I was even accepting myself as I was, as a teenager. And as we
evolve as human beings, or as our condition evolves, as human beings, that perception
might change. Unfortunately, disability or an activity limitation is something that can be
acquired. So it may change our perception of ourselves. And it may change the way we
answer a question, if there's a question, are you a person with disability? Yes or no. But
there's also even despite the condition itself, there's a level of trust in ourselves and trust in
others, acceptance of ourselves and the way we feel that we will be accepted or not by
others, that will have an influence on us self declaring, especially if it's invisible. Someone
wouldn't have to necessarily self declare.
So I may choose especially if it's an invisible disability not to disclose, we're all facing that
as we're getting older. Unfortunately, we can acquire a disability, something very simple in
many people's lives when they get in their 40s. And suddenly, they don't see as well as they
used to, and suddenly they need glasses. But before they accept for themselves that they
need to go see optometrist and get the right prescription, they will often try to look at a piece
of paper that they receive in the mail or something else a bit further or closer to try to get the
right focus and so on. It's a very simple example where there's the need to accept that they
will need that accommodation in their life. It's usually something that will not generate any
discrimination in society because many people already have glasses, and it's accepted
socially and professionally, that people can be efficient even when they have glasses and
other persons with disabilities need other recommendations sometimes or not. And but they
often are not certain that these accommodations or their different ways of doing something
will be as accepted as glasses would be or using glasses would be.
Tegan: Invisible disabilities may be more common than you might expect. For example, in
2017, just over 4 million Canadians aged 15 years and older had a pain-related disability
and over 2 million had a mental health-related disability.
Tony told us a little more about the reality of living with an invisible disability.
Tony: It means that you can choose, it means that you can choose not to ever divulge it,
and to live with that choice. And it means that you can choose to tell others and live with
that choice as well. Think of someone with a diagnostic of anxiety and that person is
evolving in the workplace and is having issues at certain point in time. And if he or she
chooses not to say anything, that means that it may affect the person very much and even
affect the colleagues very much without nobody knowing that there is a specific condition
that could be considered and could be accommodated. So, it's true for any invisible
disability. But think also if suddenly that person decides to divulge the fact that he or she
has an anxiety problem. Well, suddenly, if it's accepted, again, it's a question of trust and
acceptance. If it's accepted by the person, and the person doesn't feel she will be
stigmatized or limited by that with the perception of others. If she feels that the workplace is
conducive enough to discuss mental health issues, or any invisible disabilities, suddenly, an
accommodations can be put in place, even the person can get coaching or the person can
get some help in stressful moments, the person can even just be able to say that she's
stressed and that will relieve some stress. Maybe the only accommodation that that person
will need, to know that she can ask frequently to the boss if everything is going well. Instead
of ruminating and having ideas in your mind so there's a choice there to say or not say
something which is not the case with something visible. I mean, people will probably ask
questions even about something visible if if we pretend it's not there.
Tegan: Then, it's much more complicated than a yes/no question. “Are you a person with a
disability, yes or no?” It’s not always that simple, is it?
Tony: Yeah, we have a social model to measure disability, like in our Canadian survey on
disability done in 2017 and the one we will do in 2022, after the census, we will make use of
a social model, where we don't look at the medical conditions of the people, we mostly look
at the potential activity limitations and potential barriers that they face in the environment
that they're in for their life or for work, and with scales also for light, moderate, and high
impact of these things.
Tegan: And, and why is it especially important to acknowledge that hidden disability exists
especially during the pandemic, both to acknowledge that it exists in other people we might
interact with, but also, you know, within yourself, within ourselves.
Tony: This pandemic brought a lot of new opportunities and a lot of challenges too. There
are some invisible things that now are activity limitations for people that may never perceive
themselves as persons with disabilities, they will likely never tick that box on a questionnaire
if you ask them "Are you a person with disability or not?" You think of someone with weak
immune system, with someone, someone with pulmonary disease, someone with newly
developed phobia of the public space, these people don't perceive themselves and may
they perceive themselves as a person with disability and that's okay. But that they will likely
need accommodations. In fact, all of us we need accommodations to work from home for
example, the way many of us will do now, even if we are not with disabilities. An analyst
would need two screens to work efficiently and it's not a disability. It's a question of
productivity like it is for anybody with activity limitations. Analysis is more easily done with
lots of space to actually conduct it.
Another important aspect is that the pandemic has taught us that it could be any one of us
that would suddenly face an activity limitation. If you think of the people with weak immune
system or with pulmonary disease or other conditions, suddenly, from one day to the next,
because the context, they faced a situation that they had never envisioned. And that
impacts on their ability to participate in a physical workplace or in society in general. It could
be any of us that suddenly faced this, we could have a context or our own personal health
could evolve. And it will have an impact on our ability to contribute, work or to participate in,
in society and in the economy of Canada. And it becomes very important that we all build an
inclusive world, an inclusive workplace, an inclusive economy and society so that we're not
going to face an inability to contribute or to participate, even if the context would change, or
even if our own health would change as we get older.
Michelle: So things like accessibility, flexibility, accommodations are definitely so important.
So they give people with disabilities the ability to work, to engage in employment. And this is
because they address the environmental barriers that can make disability limiting.
Tegan: That's Michelle Maroto.
Michelle: I'm Michelle Maroto and I'm an associate professor of sociology at the University
of Alberta.
I tend to focus on things related to inequality or stratification, which is the more structural
aspects of inequality. And then sometimes things come up in life, so COVID-19. There's a
lot to study around that we see it in the news and I want to keep going and learn a little bit
more about it.
Tegan:
Michelle and her team used data from StatCan’s Canadian Survey of Financial Security to
compare nonhousing assets between households with and without disabilities.
Michelle: In this recent project we focused on non housing assets, so these are people's
assets that aren't within their houses, so their savings accounts, their pensions and this can
be really important for security because these are things that are easier to access when
things go bad, so when you have financial hardship you can more easily withdraw money
from your savings account to keep going than remortgage your house. And we used data
from the survey of financial security over three waves. So from 1999 up until 2012, we
looked at and we found that households where someone has a disability tend to own a lot
less in terms of non housing assets. So we saw that they owned about 25% less than
households that didn't have disabilities, and one of the things we also looked at was how
this might be related to employment. So we know that one of the ways in which people can
build their assets comes from their income, so if you're in better job so you can put money
away, save it on a regular basis and that'll help your wealth. And we know that people with
disabilities have less access to the labour market, so this is a situation where that definitely
plays into things. But even after considering employment disparities, we still saw these gaps
as well.
Tegan: A 25% difference sounds like a lot. Can you put that in perspective for our listeners?
Is there a dollar difference between two average people, one with and one without
disabilities, when controlling for factors like education, employment and family structure?
Michelle: Yes, so we looked at this as a percent difference 'cause we can see it very across
that distribution. But at the middle it was about a $22,000 difference, which that's a big
amount of money. If you're thinking about it in terms of wealth.
Tegan: Why is wealth disparity an important factor to consider in the context of a global
pandemic?
Michelle: Well, so answering this question I think really comes down to capturing some of
the differences between income and wealth more broadly. So what they are and what they
do, and income generally refers to money that you have coming in, so it's that flow of
resources and for most people we get most of our income from employment from our wages
and our salaries. And a lot of research. This is also really common measure that we use
when we think about inequality. It's something that's easy to access. We talk about it in
surveys, we can access it in people's tax returns if we're looking at it. But wealth doesn't
really tell the full story or income doesn't really tell the full story. That's why I also like to
think about wealth as well. And wealth refers to everything you own minus everything you
out, so your assets minus your debts, and that really makes it more of a stock measure that
can build over time. So it presents certain benefits and a stability that income doesn't
necessarily present to people, and it can include things like money in your bank account or
the home you own, or having a retirement savings. And I think for most people this means
stability. And when we got hit with a pandemic, this made these disparities really clear. So
what do you rely on when your income disappears and one of the first things people look
towards is their savings accounts if they have them. After that they look towards borrowing,
so that might be through loans, but it's often through credit cards. But again, you need
access to lending institutions. And then you might depend upon family and friends, but that
also becomes pretty limited. So when that income disappears, when that flow of resources
coming in, that's where wealth becomes really important. And that's why I think during the
pandemic especially, we've seen these wealth disparities really put front and center again.
Tegan: The Canadian Survey on Disability found that 1.6 million Canadians with disabilities
were unable to afford required aids, devices, or prescription medications due to cost.
So, based on your findings, are many people facing a real conflict between wanting to work
and wanting to keep themselves safe from the virus?
Michelle: Oh, absolutely yes. And I mean, this is especially true for people with disabilities
and chronic health conditions. Since there are more risks already for developing
complications with COVID-19. And a lot of our employed respondents were in jobs that
allow them to transition to working from home. They're also in jobs that would give them
options to take leave as well, but a lot of people didn't have these options, and this is
particularly true for people in the retail industry in the service area industry. Where these
jobs mean a lot of contact with lots of people on a regular basis. Which can make it really
risky. Do you want to keep getting my paycheck or do I want to make sure I stay healthy
and that's really tough for people to decide about.
Tegan: In terms of employment, there was a 21 percentage points difference between those
with and without disabilities. 80% of those without disabilities were employed compared to
59% of those with disabilities.
So could you explain to our listeners how someone who has remained in their job could still
face financial insecurity?
Michelle: So we tend to think of work as this way out of poverty and the means of providing
financial security and upward mobility for people. And these are all good things. But this
isn't actually true for everyone. For a lot of people, having a job today doesn't mean you're
going to have a job tomorrow or next month or next week. And when we looked within our
sample, we saw that about half of employed respondents were concerned that they could
lose their jobs in the next month, and 40% were concerned about losing them throughout
the pandemic. So we saw a lot of concerns about job loss when people weren't sure that
their jobs would still be there and generally work is precarious these days. And then
especially so, during a pandemic, and even if you still have a job, a lot of jobs don't pay very
well. They don't offer very good benefits, and people with disabilities tend to be over
represented in these jobs and that's kind of where some of my earlier research focused on
this over representation in certain jobs that aren't so great. So work doesn't necessarily
mean security for people, unfortunately.
Tegan: Yeah, talk about. Yeah, talk about like stress and anxiety like yeah.
Michelle: Yes, exactly.
Tegan: A third of the employed respondents reported that their financial situation had
worsened compared to the previous year. These were people who had not lost their jobs,
and they still found themselves in a worse position after a year. StatCan’s crowdsourcing
survey conducted in the summer of 2020 showed that almost one-third of participants
reported that their household income decreased since the start of the pandemic. Of these,
over half reported difficulty in meeting their food and grocery needs.
Can you talk a little bit about why more than a third of your employed respondents still found
that their financial situation had worsened compared to the previous year?
Michelle: So the primary reason here is related to income losses. So a lot of people still had
jobs, but they were working reduced hours and had reduced incomes. So those who had
some savings to fall back on were doing better. But that was really a small percentage of
respondents, and there were also respondents who discussed things like a loss of
community supports and services that they had been able to access prior to the pandemic
and something also faced increased cost. So if you're isolating at home, those delivery
costs can add up and help might become harder to find as well.
Tegan: The threat of financial insecurity, the threat of losing your livelihood, that's stressful
at any point, but when paired with the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic it’s a recipe for a
strain on mental health.
Michelle, could we talk about mental health? What did you find in your research?
Michelle: Sure, yeah. So during the pandemic last summer we started a study where we
wanted to see how people with disabilities and chronic health conditions were managing
under COVID-19. We did a survey in June and then we followed up with a bunch of
interviews with people to kind of expand upon that. And with our survey data we asked
people about whether or not they had experienced some increases in anxiety, increases in
stress or increases in despair. During the pandemic, and those are sort of some measures
of mental health status. So we have a lot of different ways to measure mental health. This is
kind of a quick and easy way to do that in a short survey with people, and then we looked at
how these outcomes were related to certain factors. So one of the things we looked at was
whether or not people who had COVID-19 affect their finances in a negative way saw these
increases. So, for instance, we asked if COVID-19 had limited people's ability to pay debt or
pay bills or purchase groceries. And for those who had said yes to this question, they were
more likely to report that their anxiety had increased, their stress had increased, and their
despair had increased, when we're comparing people who didn't have those negative
financial effects, so we can kind of see those effects on finances. Also affected mental
health, and we looked at some other things too, so we saw that people who reported being
more concerned about contracting the virus also reported increases in anxiety and stress.
And then we also saw this really strong relationship between changes in loneliness and
belonging, and increases in stress and anxiety. So people who were feeling lonelier also
had big increases in stress and anxiety. People who said that their feelings of belonging had
decreased also had these big increases in stress and anxiety, so we can kind of see that
isolation overlapping with those mental health effects as well.
Tegan: StatCan data seem to back that up. Information collected via a crowdsource
questionnaire in June and July 2020 on the experiences of Canadians aged 15 and older
with long-term conditions and disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic revealed that over
half of participants reported their mental health is worse than it was prior to the start of the
pandemic.
This decline in mental health was also seen in the general population after the start of
physical distancing. This may be related to feelings of isolation and being separated from
normal social supports as a result of social distancing. Participants with long-term
conditions or disabilities could be more impacted during the pandemic since many rely on
formal and informal social supports and almost half receive help with daily activities.
Isolation is definitely something I think many of us are struggling with right now. Can
confirm, personally. Michelle, could you talk about the effect of isolation on people with
disabilities?
Michelle: In the case of people with disabilities, they have already experienced high levels
of isolation. We have a lot of research that says they have smaller social networks. They
have fewer friends, they have fewer social interactions. And this is partly due to aspects
related to disability itself, so it can limit mobility, can limit social interactions, but I think it's
also due to a lot of the negative stereotypes around disability as well as the barriers that
limit participation in society. So, for instance, if you don't have access to employment, you
don't have work friends, you don't have that type of social interaction and really the
pandemic has made all this worse, so we've had to actually limit those social action social
interactions to keep safe. And this has been a particularly important for people with
disabilities and chronic health conditions because they are more likely to
have complications with the virus, so they're likely taking extra measures in this case,
which is increasing social isolation and limiting those interactions.
Tegan: Michelle wasn't the only one to bring up isolation. When I asked Tony about some of
the challenges people with disabilities face during the pandemic, isolation was at the top of
the list.
Tony: The first challenge that comes to my mind--and I'm surprised even myself--is feeling
isolated. Some people with severe disabilities feel... still feel and felt isolated before the
pandemic and feeling isolated, even in the crowds. Or sometimes at home, feeling
different... if you don't accept yourself well, if you're not feel accepted by others and
included by others, even if you get a job, if you're not fully included to achieve the objectives
of the team and contribute to these results. That's probably the worst thing that they feel.
They feel alone and isolated. Sometimes they they feel undervalued and that's not very
good. As as society and as organizations, we need to make sure we don't leave any talent
on the table. We need to make sure that we give the proper accommodations so that we
can benefit from the potential the abilities of people with activity limitations.
Another unique way that people with disabilities have been affected with the current
situation we're facing is especially for the ones who need some help in their daily life. That
people that suddenly would need that help would be having more difficulties to get it in the
correct conditions, either through volunteers or through family members and so on, or
through services and that certainly has become a challenge for many people with
disabilities.
Tegan: Before the pandemic, almost half of those with a disability received help with daily
activities because of their condition. Of those, 36% relied only on help from outside their
household.
Michelle: So a lot of people have paid or unpaid help that they might live with that might be
coming in, and that's been limited, so there's been less access to that which is made it
harder to do those activities of daily living. But it's also increased isolation as well, so those
things have been kind of building on each other.
Tegan: So, Michelle, I have to say that the thing that struck me most when I was reading
your research is just how much the stressors pile on each other. Disability can limit your
income while also meaning that you have additional expenses, plus other people in your
home might have to take time away from their work to help out. In the pandemic, the
average person with a disability is likely to work in a job where they have a higher chance of
catching COVID-19, and then if they do, they’re more likely to have complications, and it
just seems like it never really ends. It's just one thing after the next.
Michelle: Yeah, and I think this applies to inequality more broadly going into the pandemic,
so we know that a lot of people are better off than others. When we started out the pan--
that with the pandemic and what we've unfortunately seen is there's there's been a
divergence, so people who came into the pandemic in good jobs with more money in their
bank accounts, owning homes, they're doing OK, and people are still struggling in different
ways. But in terms of finances, we see at the top of the distribution people doing OK that
way. At the bottom of the distribution, it's been a very, very different story and as you
mentioned, if we're thinking about this with disability, we're thinking about a group of people
going into the pandemic with lower rates of employment. Many who were reliant on
government benefits that aren't so great, that aren't necessarily giving people enough
money to get by each month. Many people who are also relying on maybe outside help, but
more often family caregivers who have to often sacrifice other employment and wages. To
do that, caregiving to be involved that way. So again, this is something that is building and
expanding inequality and as a society we have the ability to intervene in different ways, to
deal with inequality, to make it a little bit smaller. Unfortunately we don't always do that so I
think CERB was something that has been a great benefit and really helps people who had
had employment beforehand. We see a lot of the data that people who at the very bottom of
the income distribution who had lost employment didn't totally fall off, so they were able to
get by. But this is also situation that points out that we can't just type benefits to employment
when we do that, we see what happens. You lose employment and it goes away. We have
to think about benefits more broadly and supporting people throughout our income
distribution, and I think that's one of the things that this pandemic has made really apparent
to me is, again, the urgency of thinking about our policy is on a broader level, thinking about
how various groups, so people with disabilities, but other minority groups and other groups
to experience very low levels of income, high levels of poverty, that we want to consider
those in policy making. We want to consider OK, how can we actually go in and redistribute
all the benefits that are coming through our society? How do we have a situation where they
don't just get stuck at the very top, to the very small 1% of people up there? And I think
those are things we really have to consider in different ways.
I try to be hopeful. I try to think about this as a break in what has been going on. So crises
can also offer opportunities so we can change how we do things. We can change how we're
thinking about policy, how we're thinking about supporting people within our society. And
perhaps seeing what has happened in this pandemic, putting inequality right front and
center for so many people might just do that. So I'm going to try to be hopeful as we kind of
still muddle through this next wave of the pandemic, but we'll see, it's hard to tell right now.
Tony: The pandemic has brought some opportunities, but also some challenges that there's
some there's some things we need to discuss because they're not fully resolved. If you think
of all the Plexiglas that's been put in the public space, they're a challenge for me. So I look
forward for them to be removed, but I understand that they won't be removed before the
sanitary measures are not needed.
Tegan: Could you talk more about that, the challenges? What do you mean when you say
plexiglass is a challenge for you?
Tony: If you think of my own experience, as someone with low vision, I could still travel
around the world and take a public bus or go to a store. And there are some barriers that
have appeared since then, that I look forward, that they'll be removed once the sanitary
guidelines are back to normal. For example, if I don't drive a car, which is a constraint that I
have in my life, I will need to take public transport. So by taking public transport, I have
more risk of catching the virus. And I don't do that. So even if I take public transport, there
would be some plexiglass in some places, or there would be a place where I would need to
tap the card at the grocery store, and there's still a plexiglass. So there's a more risk to hit
my face on the Plexiglas and more risk of catching the virus even by being forced to type
my pin in the terminal. Because I look closely to the terminal. And I touch with my fingers.
Something socially accepted that at the grocery store, I could just take a box of something
and look closely at the box to read what's on it. It's not accepted anymore, easily in society,
I feel that it's something that I should not do, given that what I would not like others to do
with the food that I bring home. So until that time, when we're back to normal, some people
with disabilities are facing more barriers, while some other people are experiencing new
freedom, because they can get everything delivered to their home, they can work from
home. They can speak with videoconferencing with others and becomes the way to
socialize. It's open ways for them to see museum concerts and other things. And so there's
some things all these good things we need to keep and all these barriers that we can
remove. We need to remove when once it's time to remove them.
Tegan: The 2017 Canadian Survey on Disability reported that among employees with a
disabilitiy aged 25 to 64 years, more than 1 in 3 needed at least one accommodation to be
able to work. This represents just over 772,000 Canadians.
The most common accommodations were flexible work arrangements, like working from
home.
Perhaps the most obvious change in working conditions is the sudden accommodation
many workers have received to work from home. Could you discuss some of the reactions,
good or bad, that your respondents reported regarding the new arrangement, be it working
from home or any other sort of new work situation?
Michelle: Well, working from home was definitely the most common work change that
people talked about. More than half of our employed respondents transition to a full or
partial work from home arrangement, and that change is definitely disruptive for people. But
it's not all bad, right? Keeps you protected from being exposed to the virus and it allows
people to actually keep working and keep having an income from a safer situation. And
what's interesting here is this is actually an accommodation that people with disabilities
have been asking about and pushing for a long period of time which a lot of workplaces
weren't flexible about, so there's been some positive aspects related to this change from
work from home and having this flexibility. Although there is still all that type of isolation that
comes with it as well.
Workplace accommodations are a common accessibility request and have been for a long
time. With the pandemic, many workplaces rushed to make it possible for all their
employees to work from home. As of May 2020, 14% of businesses reported that 100% of
their employees were teleworking or working from home. We spoke to Tony about all the
unique opportunities and challenges brought on by telework.
Tony: As a manager, I find that there again, has been many opportunities that have arisen
with this situation. I mean, we have some people that used to commute a long way from the
office, they're saving that time, some of them even use part of the time to work more. Not
that I want them to work too much. They're certainly more in good shape, they're less tired.
If you haven't commuted for an hour and a half in the morning, an hour and a half, that is a
benefit for everyone. It's more important for a person with a mobility issue, for example, that
doesn't have to go on ice after freezing rain. But I think it's important for everyone in fact it's
useful for the environment as well. So there's a benefit right there. There's some benefits for
making sure that we can better share information among each other more fluidly. But there
are some social aspects that we miss, I think we all miss some human connections, and we
look forward to have at least an hybrid mode, where we will hopefully keep those benefits
for accommodations at home and have access, again, to a common workplace for part of
our time. And for certain specific activities, I can tell you that for strategic planning, or for
some difficult discussions that we can we can need or even for reconciling data series. And
I may be old, but I think it's much better in in person. Much more efficient. And we need to,
to get back to this while keeping some of the benefits. Like I'm not walking up with an alarm
clock for the majority of the mornings, except for when I have a meeting at 8 o'clock. And for
me, that's a gift of life. I'm having lunch with my wife every day. And I've seen her more than
ever in the last year. So that for me that there are several benefits for everyone. And
obviously, there's benefits are there for people with activity limitation, they're actually more
appreciated, probably by some people with activity limitations.
Tegan: If you think about it, even this interview is an accommodation. I was in my home,
and he was in his, and yet here we are.
Tony: I feel I feel fascinated that only one year after social distancing and remote work and
everything we can do this. I mean, I felt this... it illustrates how we can adapt with the right
accommodation. We can bloom. It's actually an illustration of how we all were disabled
immediately after the pandemic because of our systems, because of our environment,
because of our culture. And now we suddenly--we're able to rally together and become a
much more able organization that will be much more agile in the future.
Tegan: When we talk about accessibility or accommodation, we often think that it mostly
benefits people with disabilities. But could you talk about how workplace accommodation
benefits workers as a whole? I know this wasn't your particular place of study, but I think
you probably would have something interesting to say about it.
Michelle: For sure, so things like accessibility, flexibility, accommodations are definitely so
important. So they give people with disabilities the ability to work to engage in employment.
And this is because they address the environmental barriers that can make disability
limiting. So disability can bring certain physical and health limitations for people, but these
limitations really only become barriers because of the ableist world we live in, where we
organize work, we organize education in a way that focuses on certain assumptions about
how people function, how peoples bodies work. So giving accommodations and allowing
this more flexibility has been really important for bringing people with disabilities who want
to work, who want to be part of employment into the workplace. And we can also think
about this on a broader scale as well. So accessibility, flexibility, accommodations, they’re
important beyond disability. So these are things that give workers more autonomy in regard
to when and how they work. They really acknowledge that this type of one size fits all
approach to work hours and work situations, that doesn’t work for everyone. We could be
better workers. We can be more productive if we have this type of flexibility in work
arrangements in terms of when and how we work, and this makes it good for employers. It's
good for workers. It can reduce stress. It can make work easier and easier overall, but it can
also increase productivity as well… So, there are these norms about work and these
expectations of where we should work in, how we should be working that's still really
influence things. This is where I think, though maybe this big change with this pandemic
where we spent a year for many people working from home might change that, might give
more accessibility, more flexibility for workers, which is good for everyone. But it's especially
good for people with disabilities too.
Tegan: Focusing on accessibility instead of disability also means focusing on what
individuals can do or could do if obstacles were removed. It helps people recognize a
barrier as a source of disability. Thinking in terms of accessibility helps to broaden what it
means to live with a disability.
Michelle: I think part of the problem is that we often think about disability as just being
limiting. So it's related to an individual and that's why they can't get a job. But when we start
to think about it a lot more, there's actually these big barriers that really matter. So if we
think about the area of employment, there was a lot of discrimination that occurs in relation
to disability. There's a lot of assumptions that we make about people with disabilities that
simply aren't true.
Tegan: So how does using the term barrier rather than disability help people to better
understand that accessibility benefits everyone?
Tony: That's a really good question. The barrier is often something that is not attached to
the person itself. It's attached to the environment. And it's something we can change, we
can reflect on how to make sure that it's removed. And once it's removed, the person can
do, and you see more the ability than the disability. The disability is often caused by the
barrier. Let's take my own example. I see in a way that makes me appreciate scenery or art
or I take pictures and I see colors, I enjoy what I see, but I see much less than most human
beings. And if all human beings would see like me, the environment would be different.
Signs would be bigger, labels would be bigger, or we would have found accommodations for everyone so that we can all see equally and contribute equally. But sometimes I have a
hard time seeing something, something I receive a document that is in PDF and it's not
accessible. Well, if everybody would use the same color scheme that I do or the same
elements of my, my workstation, we would all be working in the same way. And there are
ways to make sure that this, these barriers don't exist, they're often simple. They're just not
known because they're not needed by the majority. So, when you talk about the barrier,
instead of disability, we can all work on it, we can all make sure it disappears and that
someone like me can do my job as a director, I can fulfill my role as a father or I can even
repair some things around the house because I found my own ways to do these things and
we can all find our own ways, with the help of others sometimes or with our own
perseverance other times and to contribute and lead a full life.
Tegan: how can broadening the definition of disability help more people accept that
disability is everywhere and shouldn't be a taboo subject.
Tony: The more we open this definition but also the discussion, the more we are inclusive. I
think the more that the level of knowledge will increase in society and hopefully the level of
trust in the abilities. Because it's not about the disabilities it's about abilities that we need to
look for.
Tegan: The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the many ways that we can make the world
more accessible, especially with remote work and other accommodations. But what will the
post-pandemic world look like?
Tony: Well, hopefully, there will be people that will be, they will see that there's more
openness, I've seen more openness in organization for sure. I've seen more needs in
society as well. So more more openness and organization to provide accommodations to a
larger number of people. We have added a number of employees that requested virtual
ergonomic assessments or other accommodations, so that they would not self identify as a
person with disability, but they certainly raise their hand saying that they needed
accommodation, which I think is great. Because they will stay healthy and productive in the
long run, you might end up avoiding more activity limitations, that's, that's fairly important.
And I think we are speaking more in our workplace and in society about the needs of
persons with disabilities, we have a lot of persons with disabilities that have low income, a
lot of persons with disabilities that and suddenly more service than ever, from home, they
can they are allowed to work from home or allowed to, they can easily order something and
it will be delivered at their doorstep. I mean, that's opened a bunch of opportunities, but
there's a lot of challenges also in our public space that some barriers have been raised. So
the pandemic is an interesting situation and yeah, I hope people will be will self declare
more and will express their needs more. And given the context we're in and given the fact
that many including people with disabilities, traditionally asking for things but including also
others that have never considered that they would need to discuss their their limitations.
There are some certainly that there's more of that the public space for the for discussing
these things openly. So I hope it stays I hope it's one thing that was will stay after that initial
episodes that we've lived through in the recent year.
Tegan: You’ve been listening to Eh Sayers. A special thank you, big thank you, to our
guests, Tony Labillois and Michelle Maroto.
You can learn more about Michelle's work by visiting her website or the website of the
University of Alberta. The links are in the shownotes. You can also follow her on Twitter. Her handle is @MarotoMichelle.
The voices you heard at the top of the show were excerpts of stories from people with
disabilities about their experiences during the pandemic. Thank you to all those who sent us
their voices, and thank you to the Abilities Centre for their help in gathering them.
You can subscribe to this show wherever you get your podcasts. There you can also find
the French version of our show, called Hé-coutez bien! Thanks for listening! See you next
time.