I usually do take the stairs actually. And now that the Eaton Centre has added more, it makes it that much easier to choose that option. Your bolded text includes a good point I hadn't considered before. If you are this passionate about it, I hope you are complaining or petitioning the powers-that-be to add signs to escalators informing people they should not walk.
I'm ashamed to say the scales only started to fall from my eyes on accessibility a decade ago when my daughter was in a stroller. I remember always being annoyed with waiting for kneeling buses. Or never put thought to how few places had any accessibility aids whatsoever.

And then I needed them for the stroller, and I saw how little thought and maintenance was put into accessibility in this country. I was lucky in that regard, as many don't become aware how little attention is paid to mobility until they themselves lose theirs.

I once argued with Longo's corporate over the use of a pneumatic "elevator" in their 100 Bloor East store. Because of liability and the requirement that operators be trained means owners of said elevators don't allow them to be operated by anyone but staff. Using that particular elevator means literally picking up a telephone at the bottom, which rings the cashiers at the top of the stairs, and you proceed to wait hoping they bother to pick it up, aren't too busy, or are even there to do so. Then they have to come down the stairs, unlock the elevator, make sure you're in it, meet you at the top, open the door, etc. Getting into the store with a stroller could mean waiting 5 minutes or longer, for what is about 8 steps.

Their solution? "Maybe you can get training and get put on a list of official operators." To which I said, "F- no. Because you're just appeasing me and doing nothing for others who may need it."

Accessibility should always focus on independence, otherwise it comes across as pity. A small adjustment in store layout could've easily accommodated a multi-stage ramp, but if it's a question of extra display space vs. accommodating those with disability, capitalism will always choose the former.

There are at least three people in my building that are in wheelchairs, and yet for a very long time (even pre-pandemic), the building took little care to make sure the three automated doors got fixed promptly. I watched as other fully phone-focused tenants did things like kick the door opening buttons so they didn't have to use their hands or shoulders to open a door. I saw how poorly the TTC has implemented their subway accessibility plans (a fair chunk are still lacking elevators, long after it was to be completed in 2020). We still have Wheeltrans, FFS. It exists almost solely because of lacking accessibility infrastructure.

Soon enough though, my father-in-law developed an "invisible" disability and my wife's and her mother's Ménière's both popped up a few years apart. I openly asked friends if they had any "invisible" disabilities (do so yourself and you'll find more than you think), and the reality of the world for those with disabilities has become fully aware to me.

When I was still doing graphic design, I made sure all my clients understood that I will not do work that doesn't (when it can) accommodate. All of my website work has been screen-reader friendly. I have done some work with NBRS, and some minor advocacy volunteering. I should really do more volunteering, but finding the time these days is difficult.

But I encourage you and everyone else to take just one average day and question at each stop how easy or hard this would be for someone requiring a wheelchair, or with mobility problems, etc.

We have an aging population in Canada. Without laws requiring accessibility accommodations, a whole lot of people (see: Boomers) are going to need them soon enough. Thankfully, some laws have come into play (especially in the workplace), but so much more work needs to be done. Advocating is fine, but the government has the final say and the ability to enforce it.

I myself have no disabilities (minor loss of grip/movement in my left thumb aside), but I know there will be a day in the future that I probably will. And it makes me aware that people with disabilities today deserve as much respect and dignity that I hope I'm offered when my turn comes up. It certainly will for most people.

Regarding passing on escalators though, that sense of entitlement is so engrained in people that it's going to be near impossible to stop everyone. They look like stairs, so people will treat them like stairs. Nobody reads signs (or actually cares enough to obey them), and I seriously doubt that any company or agency is going to fork out money to enforce standing only on them. I have taught my daughter though that she doesn't have to stand right or let anyone by her, and that she has no right to ask anyone else to do so for her, and at least that's a start. I'm not going to convince the whole world though, but my hopes are that after all I've pointed out here, that at least a few have reconsidered the idea.
 
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in my experience, very few see it as a courtesy, but as a social norm that must be respected at all costs.

When my daughter was just a toddler, I was a stay/work at home dad. I was the type of parent not to have a 5 year old still “needing” a stroller, so I got my daughter used to regularly walking everywhere as early as possible. As such, that meant we’d stand two abreast on escalators. She’d prefer my left hand to hold while walking, so we’d get on escalators with me on the right. That is, after the weeks it took her to conquer her fear of escalators to begin with.

The problem is, small child on the escalator means adults think they can just “squeeze by” without notice, while going up on the left. Regardless of how little space there is.

So I started standing to her left. You’d think that’d give people a signal, but no. It just meant they tried pushing by on the right instead of the left. Twice, she lost her balance and would have fallen were I not holding her hand.

Once a guy “asked” me (if “look out” is a question) to move, and I said “no, I’m with a toddler here”. To which, said person forcefully pushed her into me to get by, then called me a “racist” when I called him a “f-ing a-hole” for trying to knock down a kid. Others yelled at the guy too, after which he signalled that he wanted to fight me (?!) for this perceived transgression (this was Pape, on the way to the OSC, where a flight of empty stairs exists right beside the escalator).

He bolted when I went straight to the collectors booth with a crying toddler, but there’s little that they could do anyway.

Plenty of entitled people exist in the world. The problem is too often we indulge them.

People forget how dangerous escalators are. I witnessed something horrific when i was younger, which always stuck with me. I was Christmas shopping with my family at a mall, we came out of a store and witnessed this guy who either lost his balance or tripped on the escalator moving downwards. He crashed into the person in-front of him and the rest of the people on the crowded escalator became human dominoes. Bodies and shopping bags were all over the escalator, a couple of people were taken by the EMS to the hospital, they couldn't get up. It was pretty scary.



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I saw how poorly the TTC has implemented their subway accessibility plans (a fair chunk are still lacking elevators, long after it was to be completed in 2020). We still have Wheeltrans, FFS. It exists almost solely because of lacking accessibility infrastructure.
It's 2025 that they have to completete it by not sure where you got 2020 from. However they will have two stations that won't be finished by then., Warden and Issligntion because they both involve rebuilding the whole bus station becue of the satirs in them. for more information check this topic : https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threads/ttc-easier-access-phase-iii.26479/
 
It's 2025 that they have to completete it by not sure where you got 2020 from. However they will have two stations that won't be finished by then., Warden and Issligntion because they both involve rebuilding the whole bus station becue of the satirs in them. for more information check this topic : https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threads/ttc-easier-access-phase-iii.26479/
2020 was the original goal as of 2003 and 2008.

In 2014:

"…This is fewer stations than had been projected in the TTC’s 2008 Accessible Transit Services Plan, which anticipated that accessibility upgrades would be complete at all subway/RT stations by 2020"

As for that 2025 deadline:


22 years to get elevators in every station, and it keeps getting pushed back at every step, so at this point I'd doubt that any timeline given will be held to.
 
February 6, 2024:

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They seem to be doing all the same stuff at their new food hall at 1 York, and I have to say I've been disappointed with what I've tried so far. I've had a vindaloo from Curryosity, an eggplant parm sandwich from the Underground Sandwich, and a fried chicken sandwich from the Beauty's Chicken place, and all were decidedly mediocre.
 

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