Max Brault: Race to the Starting Line
December 3rd was International Day of Persons with Disabilities—a day meant to recognize the contributions and rights of people with disabilities worldwide. Today, we're sitting down with someone who's spent 40 years making sure that recognition turns into actual change.Max Brault—national leader in accessibility, author, and someone who lives with spinal muscular atrophy—doesn't just talk about accessibility. He's helped build the Accessible Canada Act, transformed hiring practices in the federal government, and now consults with corporations trying to figure out what true inclusion actually looks like. His new book, The Race to the Starting Line, cuts through all the box-checking and virtue signalling to explain why equality has to start long before anyone even gets to compete.
We're talking:
- Why the Accessible Canada Act exists—and why the Charter alone wasn't enough
- The moment Stats Canada discovered 27% of Canadians identify as having a disability (not the 4% everyone kept citing)
- How organizations confuse accommodation with inclusion
- Why "we're working on it" is code for "we haven't actually started"
- The difference between designing for people with disabilities and designing with them
Whether you're building spaces, creating policies, or just trying to understand why accessibility matters beyond compliance, Max brings decades of lived experience and hard-won wisdom about what it actually takes to build a world where everyone gets to show up fully.
Learn more: Max Brault's website and book
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