About the Atlas:

Combining the expertise of researchers from the fields of disability policy analysis and Geographic Information Science (GIS), this interdisciplinary project created an atlas of maps that show, at a glance the relationship between literacy and disability.  This spatial look at the issues provides a tool for policy and service development.  It reveals information about what promotes or hinders literacy, opportunities for communication, and participation in society.  The objective was to investigate the spatial characteristics of literacy and disability in Canada and the spatial characteristics of their relationship. 

The study:

• Used GIS methodology and spatial data to uncover and analyse the relationship between literacy and disability
• Provides a set of spatial data to be used in policy development
• Applies a rights and inclusion perspective to literacy and disability data
• Makes recommendations regarding policy in the area of disability and literacy
• Shows how GIS can be used to inform social policy

Mapping disability and literacy variables, both on their own and in combination, allows us to see issues in an inventive way.  Maps are defined in cartographical theory as "graphic representations that facilitate a spatial understanding of things, concepts, conditions, processes, or events in the human world"¹ Thus mapping, as well as the varying perspectives on disability and literacy used in the study, facilitate a fresh look at the issues involved.  With spatial representations, as opposed to linear, numerical or narrative depictions, the viewer's attention is drawn to visual features of the data, and relationships between those features that may have been previously concealed.  The visual perspective allows some different ideas to be pursued in the interpretation of the data.

This atlas is intended to be an accessible and informative tool for use by policy-makers, program developers and people in the literacy and disability movements.  It is intended to make relationships between literacy and disability transparent.  Far from being simply an atlas of information about disability and literacy, it jumps into the arena of analyzing the data to see how it can accommodate understanding disability from a rights perspective and literacy as a critical phenomenon.  The study provides information that makes it possible to track the needs and rights of Canadians with disabilities in policy development, planning, and service delivery. 

This atlas was the joint effort of several organizations and a number of individuals.  It was financed by a grant from the National Literacy Secretariat of Human Resources Development Canada to the Canadian Abilities Foundation.  The authors wish to thank them, as well as the School of Health Policy and Management, York University, the National Center of Geographic Information Analysis, and the Applied Social Systems Laboratory of the University at Buffalo.  The researchers are also grateful for access to and use of the Statistics Canada Research Data Centre at the University of Toronto and in Ottawa.

No project is the sole achievement of its authors and this one is no exception.  There were many individuals who supported this work both in the conceptualization of the ideas and the methodology.  At the early stages, people in the field of GIS gave input for the first foray into the terrain.  Individuals in the field of literacy were proactive in encouraging that we "go for it".  And people in the disability movement recognized the potential of having data in forms that would expose information often so obscured by tables and graphs.  During the project, there were individuals who gave generously of their knowledge in statistical surveys and of their time to support the statistical data manipulation, working the data around the innovative formulations of ideas.  A number of students worked on various aspects of the project, work which contributed in important ways to the overall task.  We appreciate all of these efforts.  While the authors are responsible for the outcome, none of this could have been accomplished without the benefit of widespread support.

There is always a challenge and a danger in trying to develop novel ways of looking at data, particularly quantitative data, and of using new paradigms.  It leaves one vulnerable to criticism that may be fair but could also be silencing.  We will be satisfied if we have moved the agenda along a little towards greater understanding of the relationship of literacy and disability and if we have even the slightest impact on the introduction of disability rights and critical literacy into the collection of survey data.  We dedicate this work to those people who have faced the double jeopardy of being marginalized by their disability and by their experiences of literacy.

The Atlas is currently available.

1        Harley, J.B. and Woodward D., 1987. "Preface". In Harley J.B. nad Woodward, David (Eds).  The History of Cartography, Volume I.  Chicage and London: University of Chicago Press, p. xvi.