This project was the joint effort of a number of organizations and individuals. It was financed by a grant from the National Literacy Secretariat of Human Resources and Social Development Canada to the Canadian Abilities Foundation. The authors wish to thank them as well as the School of Health Policy and Management of York University and the National Center for Geographic Information Analysis and the Applied Social Systems Laboratory of the State University of New York at Buffalo. The researchers are also grateful for access to and use of the Statistics Canada Research Data Centre at the University of Toronto and in Ottawa. This is the second report of this nature – the first Atlas was produced in 2003.

No project is the sole achievement of its authors, and this one is no exception. There were many individuals who supported this work both in the conceptualization of the ideas and the methodology. At the early stages, people in the field of GIS gave input into the possibility of using GIS to look at social phenomena of this nature. Individuals in the field of literacy were proactive in encouraging us to go for it. And people in the disability movement recognized the potential of having data in forms that would expose information often obscured in tables and graphs. There were individuals who gave generously of their knowledge in statistical surveys and of their time to support the statistical data manipulation, working the data around innovative formulations of ideas. A number of students worked on various aspects of the project, work that contributed to the overall task. We appreciate all of these efforts. While the authors are responsible for the outcome, none of this could have been accomplished without the benefit of widespread support.

We dedicate this work to those people who have faced the double jeopardy of being marginalized by their disability and by their experience of literacy.