Proposed accessibility law is useless without enforceable standards

Monday, 26 September 2022

Piotr Mierzejewski, a wheelchair user, laments lack of accessible housing in Dunedin, as he has to shower at the local swimming pool. (First published, August 5, 2022)

Callum McMenamin is a Wellington-based independent digital accessibility consultant.

OPINION: Disabled people in Aotearoa have long been treated as second-class citizens, with access to basic rights, such as housing and education, often out of reach. Successive governments have done very little to improve this hideous injustice.

With the introduction of the Accessibility for New Zealanders Bill, it’s apparent the Government is only offering empty promises, and empty legislation to fix this situation.

“Accessibility” is about making sure disabled people can participate in society, free of unnecessary barriers. This includes things like making sure we have wheelchair-accessible housing, plain language in important documents, captions on our video broadcasts, accessible pedestrian crossings, and websites that are well-designed, so blind people can make their computers read webpages aloud.

Recently, deaf advocate Hope Cotton presented a petition to Parliament calling for legislation to enforce captioning for television and media organisations. Are we happy with the fact that disabled people have to plead with, and petition the Government just to get basic access to TV and media? In my view, this kind of legislation should have been implemented decades ago. It is an appalling failure to uphold basic human rights. What’s worse is that the Accessibility for New Zealanders Bill, in its current state, will do nothing to improve this.

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Wellington teenager and deaf advocate Hope Cotton, right, handed over a petition to Green Party MP Chlöe Swarbrick this month to make closed captions mandatory on media videos. (Alternative caption: Green Party MP Chlöe Swarbrick, wearing a brown jersey and sunglasses, and Hope Cotton, wearing a green suit, are smiling as they discuss the petition presented by Cotton, which Swarbrick is holding).

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Other countries have done far more to require accessibility for disabled people. Aotearoa is falling far behind nations we like to compare ourselves with.

In August, New Zealand underwent a United Nations examination in Geneva to assess its progress on implementing the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). The Chairperson of the IMM (Independent Monitoring Mechanism) Dr Jonathan Godfrey stated that “Disabled people do not have equal enjoyment of rights, nor do we have equity of outcomes.” He also asked the UN committee to pressure the New Zealand Government to “reapply to be considered a world leader in progressing the rights of disabled New Zealanders”.

I have lived my adult life with low vision. My existence is filled with experiences of what these unnecessary accessibility barriers feel like. For years, I struggled to access an education, and to find suitable employment. I spent a long time on the benefit, with little hope of a brighter future for myself.

All of these basic things that many would take for granted were out of reach for me, because the world was not designed for people like me. The world was designed for the “average”.

Callum McMenamin says the Accessibility for New Zealanders Bill ignores the two main things the disabled community has been asking for – “accessibility standards, and legislation to enforce them” (File photo). (Alternative caption: in a file photo taken for a story in which Callum McMenamin highlighted his concerns over silent pedestrian crossings in Wellington, McMenamin, wearing a dark shirt and smiling at the camera, is leaning against a traffic light pole in the Wellington CBD).

Luckily, I did make it out the other side. I did eventually get a degree, and a job doing what I love – improving accessibility for disabled people. But I understand that this is also a privilege that many do not have. It is essential to help our fellow human beings succeed when the cards are stacked against them. In my view, inaction on these issues is equivalent to supporting the discriminatory status quo.

One only has to look at the high-level statistics to understand what I’m talking about here.

According to the Welfare Expert Advisory Group, 53% of working-age people on a benefit are disabled. Often we don’t consider this fact when we talk about unemployment. Unemployment is often treated as a political football, seemingly without any understanding of the systemic discrimination that causes unemployment. It is evident that there is structural, and pervasive ableism (disability discrimination) occurring in our society, which forces many disabled people into poverty.

So what is the Government doing about this problem?

Well, I can tell you what it’s not doing: listening to disabled people.

The disabled community has been calling on the Government to take action on accessibility for decades. Mainly, it has been asking for two things: accessibility standards, and legislation to enforce them. And what was the Government’s response? A piece of legislation that sets no standards, and has no enforcement. Precisely the opposite of what disabled people asked for.

For too long, leaders have been getting away with simply paying lip-service to the rights of disabled people. We can’t fix these huge systemic problems with thoughts, prayers, and meaningless platitudes – we need actual, strong leadership from our Parliamentarians.

Given that (almost) nobody in Parliament openly identifies as disabled, is it really a surprise that we see this kind of performative, ineffective action? Perhaps if disabled people were proportionally represented in Parliament, we would see laws that better reflect the needs, and values of our community.

The Accessibility for New Zealanders Bill is currently in select committee, and submissions close on November 7, 2022. If you want to support disabled people on their journey to access equal rights, please make a submission calling for stronger accessibility legislation, that includes the enforcement of accessibility standards. Make our voice heard – and end this miserable cycle of being continuously ignored, and dismissed by those in power.