Disability news and resources in North America
Library > Countries > North America
This page lists the countries in North America with resources and recent highlights.
Countries
Recent Highlights
In Canada:
What is the pay gap between persons with and without disabilities?
“The 2019 CIS revealed that persons with disabilities aged 16 years and older had an average annual income of about $11,500 less than persons without disabilities ($43,400 and $55,200, respectively). This results in a 21.4% pay gap between persons with and without disabilities, or persons with disabilities earned 79 cents to every dollar earned by persons without disabilities.” (Jun, Statistics Canada)
Ministers take steps towards ensuring disability-inclusive air travel. (May, Disability Insider)
In Guatemala:
How do people with disabilities make healthcare decisions? A qualitative study focusing on use of primary healthcare services in three regions. (Feb)
In Mexico:
Women with disabilities: the other face of migration. (May, Yo También)
In the United States:
Amazon Got a Perfect Score on Disability Inclusion—From a Group It Helps Fund – Mother Jones —From a Group It Helps Fund:
“Disability:IN released its annual “Best Places to Work” Disability Equality Index, which grades how well companies prioritize and accommodate disabled employees. One company that earned a perfect score: Amazon, which has been accused of disability discrimination by state agencies and current and former staff.” (Jul, Mother Jones)
Jordyn Zimmerman is redefining communication as a nonspeaking advocate for disability rights, describing “augmentative and alternative communication”:
‘It’s essentially all the ways someone may communicate besides speaking. It refers to any tool or method or support to help someone be heard or understood. The “augmentative” is usually meant to add to someone’s speech, and the “alternative” is usually meant to be instead of someone’s speech. For me, iPad paired with a text-based application serves as the tool that allows me to reliably and effectively be heard and understood.’ (Apr, the 19th)
Long COVID Is Being Erased—Again What was once outright denial has morphed into a subtler dismissal. (Apr, The Atlantic)
What Are the Top Barriers to Digital Inclusion in 2023? “79% of website users and 78% of app users said they feel frustrated because they don’t have as much independence as a sighted person when completing digital tasks.” (Apr, American Foundation for the Blind)
Guide to Investigating Disability Issues (Mar, Global Investigative Journalism Network)
Profound discussion of how ableism enables all forms of inequity. “Ableism plays a leading role in how we frame, understand, construct and respond to race, class, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, nationality, criminal status, disability, and countless other identities.” (Jan, Truthout)
Ageist? Ableist? Who, Me? “Think what older people could learn from them about asking for help, adapting to impairment, and age pride! Think what younger people with disabilities could learn from olders about moving through life. Think how we’d all benefit if hearing and mobility aids were stripped of stigma. Let’s get interdependent!” (Jan, Generations)
What I learned from the Generation of Disabled Activists Who Came After Me (2022, Time) An essay by Ben Mattlin, accompanying the release of Disability Pride: Dispatches from a post-ADA world.
10 Ways Designers and Researchers Can Meaningfully Engage With Disabled People in 2023. Includes designing against ableism: “When I say Design Against, I mean: whatever social issue or group you want to design for, identify the structural factors that are really, materially shaping those problems and design against those instead.” (2022, Alex Haagaard)
Voices of Disability Economic Justice a series led by disabled writers. “As our collaborative members work together to bring disability into the economic debate, people with disabilities who have experienced our broken systems firsthand are uniquely positioned to articulate what better public policy would mean for their lives.” (2022, TCF)
The Pandemic’s Legacy Is Already Clear: All of this will happen again. “America has little chance of effectively countering the inevitable pandemics of the future; it cannot even focus on the one that’s ongoing.”
“The new coronavirus exploited the country’s many failing systems: its overstuffed prisons and understaffed nursing homes; its chronically underfunded public-health system; its reliance on convoluted supply chains and a just-in-time economy; its for-profit health-care system, whose workers were already burned out; its decades-long project of unweaving social safety nets; and its legacy of racism and segregation that had already left Black and Indigenous communities and other communities of color disproportionately burdened with health problems.” (2022, The Atlantic)