About the Book:

During the last twenty-five years, major surveys that documented rates of literacy and disability within the Canadian population were undertaken. These included Health and Activity Limitation Survey (HALS 1986, 1991), International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS 1994), National Population Health Survey (NPHS 1996), and Census of Canada (CC1990).

Marcia Rioux and Ezra Zubrow co-directed The Geography of Literacy and Disability project sponsored by National Literacy Secretariat through the Canadian Abilities Foundation with help from York University, the RDC, and the National Center of Geographic Information Analysis.

The four objectives of the project were:

• To use GIS methodology and spatial data to make the relationship between literacy and disability transparent
• To provide spatial data for policy development
• To apply a human rights and inclusion perspective to literacy and disability data
• To make policy recommendations to show how GIS can be used to inform social policy

The products included an atlas entitled The Atlas of Disability and Literacy that was organized around the geography of literacy and the geography of disability and their interactions. A similarly organized report entitled The Geography of Literacy and Disability examined the results in more technical and interpretative detail. Four articles were published in journals and presentations were made to various government and NGO groups and to the American Association of Geographers (peer-reviewed).

There were numerous conclusions and findings at both the national and provincial level. Importantly, the differences in the survey methodologies and definitions resulted in a diversity of rates for similarly labeled types of literacy and disability at both the national and provincial levels. Not only were the rates different but their patterning across the country at the provincial and sub-provincial level also varied so that in some cases where one survey suggested relatively high values in relationship to the contiguous areas, other surveys showed relatively low values. Furthermore, it was clear there was a complex, multi-directional relationship between literacy and disability. In some cases they reinforced each other but in others they had an inverse relationship. There was a disjuncture between literacy measures and individual perception of skills. In the socioeconomic sphere, it was clear that there were relationships between disadvantage and low literacy skills as well as between disadvantage and disability. However, they varied both spatially and in terms of substance. Frequently, there were national patterns that showed the nation divided into four sections - the West, Ontario and Quebec, the Maritimes, and the North.

The atlas and the report described not only the conventional, limited definitions but created new categories for "critical disability" and "critical literacy". Indices of barriers and accommodations for disability were created and mapped across the country. The degree to which barriers were accommodated was related to various socioeconomic variables both in the past and in a combined projected index for 2001 that was accurate within 2%.

The Book is currently available.