Help Make Canada More Accessible

Posted by Jill Browne Sep 19, 2007

Recently, I asked two ladies, both Deaf, their opinion of air travel in Canada. We were in an airport at the time.

One lady said, "I don't fly! It's so much easier not to."

The other said, "This is my first flight in eighteen years."

Both love to travel, but the hassle and stress of flying makes them reluctant to use air if there is another choice available.

Why?

Their main reason was that they never know whether there is an emergency going on. When the flight attendants or someone on the terminal public announcement system talks, it is impossible for many Deaf passengers to decode it. Being a person without any hearing issues, I too find the announcements difficult to understand, so this was no surprise.

The other big complaint was boredom. While everyone else is enjoying TV and movies in-flight, because there is no closed captioning, the entertainment might as well not be there.

By coincidence, within the same week I received a service questionnaire from a Canadian airline. I repeated these comments and added some suggestions, including having the in-flight announcements made in plain English. "Don your mask" may look good in a written safety manual, but that's only because it's one word shorter than "Put on your mask". Nobody I know dons anything, except for some gay apparel at Christmas.

It was a pleasant surprise, therefore, to receive the September 18, 2007 Information Bulletin from the Canadian Transportation Agency and to read about the Agency's initiatives.

The Bulletin talks about a new standard for information kiosks and ticket dispensing machines, training materials related to accessible travel, the Communications Code, the Terminal Code, and the DaVinci Code. (Well, two out of three anyway). There is a wealth of good reading there, and I hope, an equal wealth of ongoing improvement in accessible transportation in Canada.