Barrier Free Manitoba

With everything going on in the world today, it’s hard to get or beat front page coverage. No, the opening of our first fully accessible outdoor rink didn’t make it (yet) to the New York Times, but it was the big picture on the print edition on the Winnipeg Free Press.

Pretty nifty. The CBC also posted an article on this great development late yesterday afternoon. Combine this with coverage provided by CTV and Global (posted here yesterday), the rink will likely be the No. 1 news story on accessibility in 2018.

The Portage and Main referendum would likely come in a close second.

While it is hard to argue with strong media interest in this very good news story, the real drama playing out, one that will affect the lives of Manitobans with disabilities for generations to come, is the implementation of the landmark Accessibility for Manitobans Act (AMA).

Implemented effectively, the AMA should mean that every new hockey rink built in Manitoba, indeed every new sports venue, is fully accessible. Now that’s real and enduring progress.

The same holds true for almost everything based on the AMA’s promise of achieving substantial progress toward full accessibility by 2023.

But accessibility advocates such as BFM face two problems. First, the media tends to cover incidents, not issues.

The second and bigger problem is that the implementation of the AMA continues to be slow, weak and incomplete.

Click here for the Free Press coverage.

Click here for the CBC coverage.

Click here to see CTV’s coverage.

Click here to read the Global coverage.