Beyond health care, access is limited when women with disabilities begin a job search. Employment opportunities only advertised in the classified section of the newspaper are clearly inaccessible to individuals who are blind or visually impaired. The "stand up" counters at the Canada Employment Centres, where job searchers are required to stand to view job boards and computer screens, have been maintained even after recent remodeling. These counters are inaccessible to people with mobility impairments as well as to those with visual impairments. The shift to modem technology, although more efficient in some ways, has overlooked the fact that a substantial number of this country's unemployed are women with disabilities who cannot access the job market in the same competitive manner in which a person without a disability can?

Recent government funding cuts exacerbate an issue common to all working women with children in primary school or younger. Day care is often bard to come by. In addition, building admittance, transportation and information in alternative formats are scarce, and daycare facilities seem to have limited experience when it comes to mothers with disabilities For example, I have often been in a position to apologetically explain that, as a visually impaired mother, I do not drive a car and as a result I am at the mercy of the public transit schedule.

Students with disabilities often have to invest additional time in their academic education over and above class and study time. Time-consuming transportation often requires students with disabilities to customize their courses and schedules around public transit timetables.⁶ Studies may be further complicated by bulky adaptive equipment which demands more time and space to complete even the simplest of assignments.

Limited mobility for a quadriplegic or paraplegic student may mean the library is only accessible with an assistant, and such assistance is often limited to the schedules of volunteers and within business hours. Requests for alternative formats also depend on the " schedules of others, whether to get a book on tape or overhead copied. Alternative formats, assistants and transit often fail. This can mean that the student with a disability is left on her own to learn independently. When this happens, and conflicts with the motherhood schedule, the result is chaos.

Needless to say, these barriers often prevent students with disabilities from having a part-time job to supplement their income, and lack of job experience is also another barrier that prevents many from entering the paid labor force.

Attitudinal Barriers

People with disabilities have been rejected by society. Non-disabled expectant mothers are sometimes haunted by fears that their child will have a disability. The choice, even promoted by the medical profession, is whether to attempt "perfection" through abortion or to live with God-given imperfections. Canadians tend to pray for healthy perfect infants to be born, usually boys. Even Hitler attempted to purify his race when he had people with disabilities sent to the Nazi death camps.

Stereotyping through the arts and literature has implicitly left its mark on society. Characters with physical disabilities and abnormalities appear in stories as pathetic children (Heidi and The Secret Garden) or as villains, hunchbacks and giants (Frankenstein, Dracula and Jack and The Beanstalk). Dwarfs and trolls have been noted for their meandering under bridges or living alone as social outcasts, and there is gruesome evil lurking behind the mask of the Phantom of the Opera. People who are different, who are taller, shorter, or who do not conform to the "norm," are often characters who resemble people with disabilities.

Where were the Rick Hansens and Terry Foxes of yesteryear? Many were subsisting in attics and institutions, housed away from the eyes of the temporarily able-bodied society. I have had a personal conversation with a man in his mid-forties who was born with severe limited physical abilities and who bravely recited his story of : how he was raised in a women's penitentiary because “no one else would have me.”