Results tagged “accessibility”

"To create an urban environment in all parts of the city that encourages and supports walking," states Toronto's Pedestrian Charter, the City "upholds the right of pedestrians of all ages and abilities to safe, convenient, direct and comfortable walking conditions" and also "provides and maintains infrastructure that gives pedestrians safe and convenient passage while walking along and crossing streets."

It's hard to know where to start in our analysis of this ad for the website accessibletoronto.com, found above Sparkling Bubbles on Dundas Street East by local Web accessibility expert/TTC enthusiast Joe Clark. Needless to say, placing your wheelchair-emblazoned logo above a restaurant without a wheelchair ramp is sending mixed signals at best. The fact that the second floor of the building is boarded up—inaccessible to the world, you might call it—doesn't help. To top it off, the website in question is not actually accessible, at least to visually impaired visitors using screen-reading software that requires alt text, an HTML attribute that helps such programs properly interpret images.

The last time we looked at accessible pedestrian signals (APS), those chirping and cuckooing crossing indicators for the visually-impaired, it was with some surprise at the city's claim that it simply couldn't afford to install APS at more than a handful of intersections each year. Instead of allocating enough money to improve availability of a fairly basic service to visually-impaired residents, the city instead looked for corporate sponsors to pick up some of the considerable slack, resulting in pedestrian signals "funded by IBM" and other organizations dotting the city, a virtual declaration that the city was abdicating its responsibilities.

For reasons that were surely thoroughly considered, York Mills was not a stop on the recent Type & Tile Tour of the Yonge-University-Spadina line. Nevertheless, due largely to escalator maintenance that has been ongoing for over a year, it is still quite the treasure trove of wacky signage. Here are some recent highlights: