Remembering David Onley
CBC Metro Morning – January 16, 2023
The following is a transcript of the CBC Metro Morning radio interview with Thea Kurdi.
Introduction
Ismaila – Ismaila Alfa, Host of CBC Metro Morning
Thea - Thea Kurdi, President of DesignABLE Environments Inc.
Transcript
Ismaila: You know there is a lot to get to in this hour the program. I've been mentioning throughout the morning that Ontario’s former Lieutenant Governor David Onley has died at the age of 72. Now Onley, who used a motorized scooter, was the first person with a physical disability to hold the Lieutenant Governor post. He was a fierce advocate for improving accessibility while calling out the lack of progress that he saw from the province. Thea Kurdi, she is the president of the DesignABLE Environments [an accessibility and universal design consulting firm], and a friend of the late David Onley, Thea. Good morning and I'm sorry for your loss.
Thea: Thank you so much. Pleasure to be here to talk about the wonderful work and wonderful man that David Onley was.
Ismaila: Please tell me more about him, what was he like, as a person and as a friend to you?
Thea: Well, the sad news is my husband passed away just over two months ago now.
Ismaila: Oh, I’m sorry.
Thea: Thank you and it was a sudden loss. [David and his lovely wife Ruth Ann have been there for me ever since.] But David and I first met in 2017 on Twitter. I posted a question asking about how long it took to modify Queen’s Park so that he could to work there because one of the problems in our legislation is that our building code and AODA don’t have any provisions for how to make work places accessible, which is surprise for most people. So I posted a question and I tagged him asking, “how long did it take to fix Queen’s Park”, and he actually wrote back. Then after that he asked to meet me and I answered lot of his questions about what’s going wrong in the design and renovation of buildings.
Ismaila: It sounds like, first of all, you were surprised that he responded to you
Thea: I was, you know Twitter is an amazing place. I hadn’t been much on Twitter at that point, but it was incredible that this man, who was a busy guy, that person has a lot of going on responded. Not a lot of people respond but I was trying to make relatable point, but I didn’t think he was going to participate. But that was the point. It was bothering him and has bothered him that the ability to employ people with disabilities is limited if you don’t have [design] legislation and what little legislation we have [for the built environment] isn’t enforced and that bothered him too. So, he wanted to reach out to me and he wanted to hear more about what perhaps I knew [as a built environment accessibility specialist] and that sparked the beginning of our great friendship.
Ismaila: It sounds to me as the type of response you got from him was reflective of the type of person he was. Tell me bit more about what it was about him as a person that helped you to connect so much.
Thea: Well, he was such a passionate, thoughtful person. And he spoke so eloquently and that’s part of reason why he was so successful. As a child I grew up watching him on the news and although I was later diagnosed with having a learning disability and hearing loss and glasses, I didn’t realise he had a disability. As a reporter he was thoughtful, he was commanding and I guess what stuck me was that he was such a good listener and that came as a friend as well. He really focusses and listen so well. And that is why he was so good with writing the AODA legislative review, was he was such a great listener. I guess much of his time advocating for accessibility he [Onley] was trying to go the root of awareness of people Onley hoped that if people know more they would do better. But when he did the AODA legislative review, he listened to people who were suffering across the province with different disabilities and came to the conclusion that no, although we have been trying extensively to use information sharing for about 10-12 years, it just wasn’t working. People were suffering. So what he heard was that it was the time now for legislation to be enforced, it which the government today still haven’t done. He wrote very specific recommendations in his report, if you haven’t read the report it’s worth reading, and in last couple of years, he spoke extensively about the root cause of resistance to change is ableism. That our society has trouble understanding that we’re all only temporary able. 100% are born with disabilities or get them through illness, accident or aging so it’s smarter, more sustainable design to make accessibility integral to what we consider to be successful design.
Ismaila: In 2005, Ontario pledged to be fully accessible by January 2025, so we got 2 years for that, how close are we to achieve that goal?
Thea: Not [close]. Well, the first thing is 4 years ago David gave very specific recommendations. Charles Beers did the first AODA review back in 2010 and nothing was done or very little was done that he recommended. Then Mayo Moran did the second legislative review in 2013 I believe, and her recommendations were not acted on. So, it’s not just this government who has been inactive, but this current government have had this report since 2019 and they still have done nothing with it. Onley would have act with the report and gave very specific recommendations to what needs to be done to actually turn things around and they wasted 4 years leaving us with less than 2 years to go.
Ismaila: What was one of the biggest things coming out of the report recommended then to turn things around?
Thea: Well, there were lot of things for [many things other than] the built environment, and most are very simple. People tend to get the wrong impression that making things accessible is very expensive. But [one of] Onley’s recommendations was to make sure that education of architects, interior designers and the entire design community, was re-focused to make sure they have the skills necessary to create accessible design. Because surprisingly [currently] accessibility is typically a part of a course or in some case only an optional course. Well, if you’re asking someone to be a Chef and you wanted to have banana bread, a good chef has been taught how to make banana bread, knows what banana bread looks like. Our current design community has no idea what accessibility really looks like, which is why so many of buildings are failing so badly at it. It’s not that people are not trying, it’s that they don’t know how. So, one of the things David and I talked a lot about, because this is a passion of mine as well, is how to make sure that the next generation are barrier busters. These are the people who are going to help us achieve an accessible Ontario and in greater context, an Accessible Canada.
Ismaila: So, not to simplify completely but the idea that accessibility shouldn’t be an after thought. This should be something that is taught and thought about from very beginning.
Thea: It’s got to be important for design like salt is in a recipe, you can’t sprinkle on the top at the end and say it’ll work. It really got to be much better and deeper than that and design community is hungry for that knowledge.
Ismaila: It’s great to hear about your friend and the way he thought about accessibility and hos he affected the way so many people think about it. Thea, great to speak with you this morning. Thank you
Thea: He will be greatly missed. Thank you so much.
Ismaila: You take care, Bye.
Thea: Bye.
Ismaila: Thea Kurdi is the president at DesignABLE Environments and accessibility and she was a friend of the late David Onley who died on Saturday [January 14, 2023] at the age of 72.
Thea: Thank you so much. Pleasure to be here to talk about the wonderful work and wonderful man that David Onley was.
Ismaila: Please tell me more about him, what was he like, as a person and as a friend to you?
Thea: Well, the sad news is my husband passed away just over two months ago now.
Ismaila: Oh, I’m sorry.
Thea: Thank you and it was a sudden loss. [David and his lovely wife Ruth Ann have been there for me ever since.] But David and I first met in 2017 on Twitter. I posted a question asking about how long it took to modify Queen’s Park so that he could to work there because one of the problems in our legislation is that our building code and AODA don’t have any provisions for how to make work places accessible, which is surprise for most people. So I posted a question and I tagged him asking, “how long did it take to fix Queen’s Park”, and he actually wrote back. Then after that he asked to meet me and I answered lot of his questions about what’s going wrong in the design and renovation of buildings.
Ismaila: It sounds like, first of all, you were surprised that he responded to you
Thea: I was, you know Twitter is an amazing place. I hadn’t been much on Twitter at that point, but it was incredible that this man, who was a busy guy, that person has a lot of going on responded. Not a lot of people respond but I was trying to make relatable point, but I didn’t think he was going to participate. But that was the point. It was bothering him and has bothered him that the ability to employ people with disabilities is limited if you don’t have [design] legislation and what little legislation we have [for the built environment] isn’t enforced and that bothered him too. So, he wanted to reach out to me and he wanted to hear more about what perhaps I knew [as a built environment accessibility specialist] and that sparked the beginning of our great friendship.
Ismaila: It sounds to me as the type of response you got from him was reflective of the type of person he was. Tell me bit more about what it was about him as a person that helped you to connect so much.
Thea: Well, he was such a passionate, thoughtful person. And he spoke so eloquently and that’s part of reason why he was so successful. As a child I grew up watching him on the news and although I was later diagnosed with having a learning disability and hearing loss and glasses, I didn’t realise he had a disability. As a reporter he was thoughtful, he was commanding and I guess what stuck me was that he was such a good listener and that came as a friend as well. He really focusses and listen so well. And that is why he was so good with writing the AODA legislative review, was he was such a great listener. I guess much of his time advocating for accessibility he [Onley] was trying to go the root of awareness of people Onley hoped that if people know more they would do better. But when he did the AODA legislative review, he listened to people who were suffering across the province with different disabilities and came to the conclusion that no, although we have been trying extensively to use information sharing for about 10-12 years, it just wasn’t working. People were suffering. So what he heard was that it was the time now for legislation to be enforced, it which the government today still haven’t done. He wrote very specific recommendations in his report, if you haven’t read the report it’s worth reading, and in last couple of years, he spoke extensively about the root cause of resistance to change is ableism. That our society has trouble understanding that we’re all only temporary able. 100% are born with disabilities or get them through illness, accident or aging so it’s smarter, more sustainable design to make accessibility integral to what we consider to be successful design.
Ismaila: In 2005, Ontario pledged to be fully accessible by January 2025, so we got 2 years for that, how close are we to achieve that goal?
Thea: Not [close]. Well, the first thing is 4 years ago David gave very specific recommendations. Charles Beers did the first AODA review back in 2010 and nothing was done or very little was done that he recommended. Then Mayo Moran did the second legislative review in 2013 I believe, and her recommendations were not acted on. So, it’s not just this government who has been inactive, but this current government have had this report since 2019 and they still have done nothing with it. Onley would have act with the report and gave very specific recommendations to what needs to be done to actually turn things around and they wasted 4 years leaving us with less than 2 years to go.
Ismaila: What was one of the biggest things coming out of the report recommended then to turn things around?
Thea: Well, there were lot of things for [many things other than] the built environment, and most are very simple. People tend to get the wrong impression that making things accessible is very expensive. But [one of] Onley’s recommendations was to make sure that education of architects, interior designers and the entire design community, was re-focused to make sure they have the skills necessary to create accessible design. Because surprisingly [currently] accessibility is typically a part of a course or in some case only an optional course. Well, if you’re asking someone to be a Chef and you wanted to have banana bread, a good chef has been taught how to make banana bread, knows what banana bread looks like. Our current design community has no idea what accessibility really looks like, which is why so many of buildings are failing so badly at it. It’s not that people are not trying, it’s that they don’t know how. So, one of the things David and I talked a lot about, because this is a passion of mine as well, is how to make sure that the next generation are barrier busters. These are the people who are going to help us achieve an accessible Ontario and in greater context, an Accessible Canada.
Ismaila: So, not to simplify completely but the idea that accessibility shouldn’t be an after thought. This should be something that is taught and thought about from very beginning.
Thea: It’s got to be important for design like salt is in a recipe, you can’t sprinkle on the top at the end and say it’ll work. It really got to be much better and deeper than that and design community is hungry for that knowledge.
Ismaila: It’s great to hear about your friend and the way he thought about accessibility and hos he affected the way so many people think about it. Thea, great to speak with you this morning. Thank you
Thea: He will be greatly missed. Thank you so much.
Ismaila: You take care, Bye.
Thea: Bye.
Ismaila: Thea Kurdi is the president at DesignABLE Environments and accessibility and she was a friend of the late David Onley who died on Saturday [January 14, 2023] at the age of 72.
Resources
Below are the links to the one (1) resource mentioned in this segment.
