The Atlas of Literacy and Disability, by Marcia Rioux, Ezra Zubrow, Mary Bunch, and Wendy Miller and available from the Canadian Abilities Foundation, is a compilation of maps that shows at a glance the relationship between literacy and disability. The atlas provides a spatial look at the issues and is a tool for policy and service development. Developed with ArcView and ArcInfo, the atlas 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 relationship between the two.

Mapping disability and literacy variables, both on their own and in combination, allows government policy analysts to see issues in a new way. With spatial representations, as opposed to linear, numerical, or narrative depictions, the viewer's attention is drawn to visual features of the data that may have been previously concealed.

The Atlas of Literacy and Disability is intended to be an accessible and informative tool for use by policy makers, program developers, and people in the literacy and disability movements. 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 Atlas of Literacy and Disability provides information that makes possible the tracking of the needs and rights of Canadians with disabilities in policy development, planning, and service delivery. Readers of the atlas will find that it

• Uses GIS methodology and spatial data to uncover and analyze the relationship between literacy and disability
• Provides a set of spatial data from different time periods 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
• Provides a methodology to evaluate the effectiveness of social policies and their implementations
• Shows how GIS can be used to inform social policy

To order the atlas, which was developed by researchers from the fields of disability, literacy, policy analysis, and GIS, call 416-923-1885; send an e-mail to able@abilities.ca with the subject line Atlas Order; or write to Atlas, Canadian Abilities Foundation, 340 College Street, Suite 650, Toronto, Ontario M5T 3A9, Canada. For more information, visit the Web sites of the Canadian Abilities Foundation (www.abilities.ca or www.enablelink.org).