Newfoundland & Labrador: on this, the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, I ask of you to spend this week REALLY paying attention to your surroundings and how accessible/inaccessible they are. If they’re inaccessible, can you do anything in the moment to change that?

Your immediate reaction is probably: “How would I be able to change accessibility in the moment?” Sometimes, easily. Is there a garbage can blocking a sidewalk? A shopping cart abandoned in an aisle? A video that you could ask to be captioned? Lots of little things can be done.

Doing one of these things might take a few seconds out of your day. But just think of how many of those things disabled people have to focus on fixing every single day just to exist in our communities. All of those little things add up to be a lot of time and work for one person.

I’m hoping that we can spread that labour out amongst a lot of people, to take some of the weight off the shoulders of the disabled community. And in order to do that, we all have to be just a little more mindful of our surroundings.