People with disabilities face serious hurdles in education system

TORONTO — Ontario’s education system needs to modernize its approach to supporting disabled students at every age level and do more to eliminate persistent barriers they face in school, the province’s Human Rights Commission said Wednesday.

In updating its education policy for people with disabilities for the first time in 14 years and issuing recommendations on accessible education, the Ontario Human Rights Commission said it wanted to offer everyone tools to address society’s evolving approach to disability issues.

Chief Commissioner Renu Mandhane said both legal and social understandings of disability have changed, adding the education system now needs to take that new knowledge into account when engaging with disabled students.

At the core of the commission’s policy, she said, is a call to shift the way disabled students are viewed by those who work with them.

“The current model for special education starts from a premise of exceptionality or the idea that students with disabilities are the exception to ’the normal’ student,” Mandhane said in an interview. “We need to start, from the beginning, designing inclusively rather than relying on one-off accommodations to deal with the varied needs that students have.”

Mandhane said disabled students encounter barriers to education from primary school through to post-secondary institutions, adding that the bulk of all issues that come before the commission concern discrimination based on disability.

The updated policy said students routinely encounter issues such as a lack of adequate supports in class, exclusion from the full educational experience, and even outright denial of accommodation requests. The commission said many of those barriers are predicated on ableism — attitudes akin to racism that “that devalue or limit the potential of people with disabilities.”

Mandhane said many students face stereotypes and pre-conceived notions about their skills, abilities and motivations from both educators and peers, all of which contribute to a more difficult school experience.

The commission’s updated policy calls on educational institutions to recognize the role ableism plays in the student experience and take steps to create a more inclusive culture, such as monitoring staff attitudes and soliciting feedback from disabled pupils.

The commission’s new policy gives educators guidance on how to offer accommodations, even in cases when a student has not explicitly made a request.