Finding an open public washroom in Ottawa when you have to ‘go’ is apparently quite the challenge.
A team of master's students at Carleton University created a comprehensive checklist of 92 public toilets across Ottawa for the advocacy group ‘gotta go’.
Through these efforts, they found 45 per cent of public toilets were unavailable, either due to seasonal or daily closures.
Only 15 percent of public toilets had outdoor signs letting people know there was a toilet inside and 63 per cent of ‘accessible’ public toilets posed at least one accessibility barrier to users with mobility challenges.
Researchers are calling on the city to provide public access to family and gender neutral washrooms as well as make sure the public knows where washrooms are located.
