Community Opinion on Disability Issues 2026

By Dr Huhana Hickey

New Zealand First’s proposed Accessibility Standards Bill deserves serious consideration. This is a detailed look at the bill. Disabled people, tāngata whaikaha/whānau hauā have spent decades asking for enforceable accessibility standards. We should not reject a potentially useful idea simply because of the party advancing it. But neither should we suspend our critical judgement because the word “accessibility” appears in the title.

The central question is not whether the Bill sounds positive. It is whether it would create comprehensive, enforceable rights and whether New Zealand First is prepared to support disabled people when accessibility carries a financial or political cost.

That matters because all eight NZ First MPs voted with National and ACT to advance the Disability Support Services Bill in May 2026. That Bill places responsibility on families and whānau “where appropriate”, while establishing a framework heavily shaped by fiscal sustainability. ⁠Parliament’s official vote recorded 67 votes in favour and 55 against.

NZ First has also remained part of the coalition through restrictions on flexible funding, the residential care funding freeze, fixed budgets and the transfer of Disability Support Services from Whaikaha to the Ministry of Social Development. Some of the March 2024 purchasing restrictions were removed in April 2026, and additional funding has been allocated to meet cost pressures. It would therefore be too simple to describe every change as a direct reduction in total expenditure. However, disabled people experienced real losses of choice, certainty and support.

Clinicians writing in the New Zealand Medical Journal warned that the funding restrictions and residential-care freeze were causing serious adverse effects for people with intellectual disabilities and their carers. Against that history, the Accessibility Standards Bill must be examined clause by clause and not treated as proof that NZ First has suddenly become the party of disability rights.

There is much in the draft worth retaining. It would create a mechanism for developing accessibility standards and applying them to specified entities, premises and services. It covers important areas such as transport, telecommunications, education, banking, utilities, justice, and government and local-authority services. Importantly, it binds the Crown.

The Bill requires organisations representing disabled people to be consulted when standards are developed. Where a standard requires an accessibility plan, affected entities must publish one, consult disabled people or their organisations, establish a feedback process and update the plan at least every five years. Complaints about non-compliance could be made to the Human Rights Commission. The Disability Rights Commissioner could recommend standards to the Minister, and the Commission would provide public guidance and education.

These features make the proposal more substantial than legislation that merely establishes another advisory body. The draft recognises a truth disabled people have repeated for years: voluntary guidance has not removed systemic barriers. Binding standards can shift responsibility from individuals repeatedly fighting for access to institutions designing accessibility from the beginning. That is the Bill’s promise. Its present wording, however, falls well short of delivering that promise to everyone.

The most immediate problem is clause 4. “Disability” is defined as a long-term physical or sensory impairment limiting access to premises or services. This excludes, or creates serious uncertainty for, people with intellectual, learning, cognitive and psychosocial disabilities, many neurodivergent people, and people with episodic or fluctuating conditions. It is astonishing that a modern accessibility bill could exclude those who often most need Easy Read information, supported communication, accessible decision-making and protection from cognitively inaccessible systems.

The definition is substantially narrower than the ⁠United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which includes long-term physical, mental, intellectual and sensory impairments interacting with barriers. An accessibility law should focus on the barriers people encounter, not construct a new gatekeeping test around a limited list of impairments. This cannot be dismissed as a technical drafting issue.

A person excluded by the definition may also be excluded from consultation, standards, plans and the complaints pathway. It divides the disability community in legislation supposedly designed to include us.

NZ First’s announcement refers to schools, hospitals, public buildings, social housing, parks and digital public services. The ⁠operative provisions of the draft Bill do not clearly deliver all of that. Health services are not expressly included in the definition of “services”. Public hospitals may be captured because they are run by Crown entities, but private healthcare and disability-related services may not be. Employment and workplaces are not listed.

Housing is not clearly covered as housing: “premises” are included only to the extent they are used or reasonably required to access services. That may cover a bank branch or transport hub, but it does not clearly establish accessibility standards for the homes in which people must live.

The Bill also lacks express coverage of emergency services, public procurement and communication formats such as Easy Read, Braille, New Zealand Sign Language, captions, audio description and augmentative communication. These matters might later appear in individual standards, but fundamental coverage should not depend entirely on future ministerial choices.

Article 9 of the UNCRPD expressly extends accessibility to buildings, roads, transportation, housing, medical facilities, workplaces, information and communications, and services offered to the public by public and private entities. A New Zealand law should be at least that clear.

Clause 8 says the Minister may require the New Zealand Standards Executive to develop or amend a standard. The Disability Rights Commissioner may recommend a standard, but the Minister is not required to accept that recommendation. There is no statutory deadline for producing the first standards, no list of priority standards, no national accessibility strategy and no date by which Aotearoa must become accessible.

A future Minister could produce narrow standards slowly, or produce none, and still face no clear consequence under the Act. This is framework legislation with much of the substance postponed. Its value will depend on standards that do not yet exist, future regulations, political will, and adequate funding. Disabled people have seen too many strategies and frameworks that promise transformation while allowing inaccessible systems to continue indefinitely.

The Bill needs mandatory timeframes, measurable targets, annual public reporting and a core set of priority standards covering the built environment, housing, transport, health, education, employment, information, digital services and emergency response. The draft also risks confusing two related but distinct obligations. Accessibility is an anticipatory, systemic duty. It requires environments and services to be designed so disabled people can use them without waiting for an individual to ask. Reasonable accommodation is an individual adjustment needed in a particular situation.

Clause 8 requires each accessibility standard to specify the “reasonable accommodation” required. Clauses 5, 10 and 14 repeatedly balance access against “undue hardship”, including an entity’s finances, resources, operations and service delivery. That may allow a systemic accessibility duty to be treated as a series of individual accommodations, each vulnerable to a cost defence.

Cost and proportionality can legitimately be considered in individual reasonable-accommodation cases. They should not become a broad escape route from minimum accessibility standards. Otherwise, organisations that have deferred accessibility for decades may continue doing so because repairing accumulated exclusion is now said to cost too much.

The Bill should distinguish clearly between non-negotiable minimum accessibility requirements, progressive duties to find and remove existing barriers; and individual reasonable accommodation. Any undue-hardship defence should be narrow and evidence-based, with the burden of proof resting on the entity relying upon it. Public bodies should face an especially high threshold.

The Bill’s greatest structural weakness is enforcement. Clause 14 allows a person to complain to the Human Rights Commission, using a modified Human Rights Act process. Yet clause 11 says a standard does not create rights or obligations enforceable in civil or criminal proceedings except to the extent provided by the complaint's subpart.

The Bill creates no independent accessibility regulator, inspection system, compliance notices, enforceable improvement orders, administrative penalties or explicit offence for repeated non-compliance. The Human Rights Commission’s existing process primarily provides information, mediation and dispute resolution.

The Human Rights Review Tribunal can grant significant remedies in discrimination cases, but the draft does not state clearly enough how a standards complaint becomes an enforceable Tribunal proceeding or what remedies would apply specifically to a breach of an accessibility standard. That ambiguity must be removed.

Disabled people should not have to carry the financial and emotional burden of enforcing public standards one complaint at a time. An independent regulator should be able to investigate systemic barriers and conduct accessibility audits, issue compliance and improvement notices, require remediation and monitor accessibility plans.

Publish the names of persistently non-compliant entities; and impose, or seek, meaningful sanctions. Individuals and disabled people’s organisations should also have clear standing, accessible procedures, protection from retaliation and funded legal support.

Without these mechanisms, an “accessibility plan” risks becoming another polished document recording aspirations while the ramp remains missing, the website remains unusable and the service remains inaccessible. The draft contains no Te Tiriti clause, no reference to the UNCRPD or the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and no specific recognition of tāngata whaikaha Māori or whānau hauā. Requiring consultation with organisations representing “disabled persons” is different from requiring partnership with tāngata whaikaha/ whānau hauā Māori. Nor does consultation guarantee influence.

Article 4(3) of the UNCRPD requires close consultation with and active involvement of disabled people through their representative organisations. For Māori, that obligation must sit alongside tino rangatiratanga and the Crown’s Te Tiriti duties.

The legislation and every standard developed under it should be co-designed with disabled people, including tāngata whaikaha/whānau hauā, Deaf, blind and Deafblind people, people with intellectual, learning and psychosocial disabilities, neurodivergent people, disabled children and older disabled people, rainbow disabled people; and disabled people in rural and isolated communities. Their organisations must be resourced to participate. Unpaid consultation is not partnership.

This brings us back to NZ First’s record. Accessibility cannot be separated from support. An accessible bus is of little use if a person cannot obtain the wheelchair, personal assistance or funding needed to reach it. An accessible workplace does not create equality if welfare policy punishes people whose impairments prevent paid work.

An accessible community cannot be built while legislation shifts care obligations back onto families and whānau without guaranteeing the resources that make choice and independent living possible. NZ First cannot vote for a DSS Bill that places greater weight on family responsibility and fiscal sustainability, remain largely silent while disabled people lose flexibility and certainty, and then expect one accessibility proposal to erase that history. This does not make the Accessibility Standards Bill worthless. It makes political accountability essential.

The PDF is expressly marked “Draft for consultation” and dated 23 June 2026. NZ First ⁠announced it as a Member’s Bill on 8 July. Under ⁠Parliament’s Member’s Bill process, a proposed bill normally needs to be drawn from the ballot, or gain the support of at least 61 non-executive MPs, before it is introduced to the House.

If NZ First regards this as a genuine priority rather than an election-year signal, it should secure coalition support for it to proceed and commit the funding required to implement it.

Before this proposal deserves the disability community’s confidence, it should adopt an inclusive, barrier-based definition of disability aligned with the UNCRPD. Expressly recognise Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the UNCRPD, tāngata whaikaha Māori and whānau hauā. Cover housing, healthcare, employment, workplaces, emergency services, public procurement, digital systems and communication access. Require a national accessibility strategy, priority standards, firm deadlines and measurable targets. Give disabled people and their representative organisations decision-making roles throughout development, monitoring and review.

Distinguish systemic accessibility from individual reasonable accommodation and tightly constrain the undue-hardship defence. Establish an independent, properly funded regulator with auditing, investigation, compliance and enforcement powers. Provide clear Tribunal rights, effective remedies, sanctions and funded access to justice.

Require regular public reporting, disaggregated data and shorter review periods for rapidly changing areas such as technology. Include a non-regression clause so standards cannot reduce protections already available under other laws. Be backed by an implementation budget and an unequivocal commitment from all three governing parties.

NZ First should also answer a wider question: will it reconsider its support for the Disability Support Services Bill and oppose policies that reduce disabled people’s choice, control and ability to live independently? If not, its accessibility message remains internally contradictory. The disability community has every reason to welcome movement towards enforceable accessibility standards.

We have fought too long for this opportunity to dismiss it. We have also fought too long to accept weak legislation simply because it is presented as progress. The proposed Bill is a useful foundation, but it is not yet a comprehensive, rights-based Accessibility Act. It excludes too many people, leaves too many areas uncertain, gives too much discretion to Ministers, relies too heavily on individual complaints and provides too few enforcement tools. Its silence on Te Tiriti and tāngata whaikaha/ whānau hauā is unacceptable.

Most importantly, legislation must be judged alongside the conduct of those promoting it. Disability rights are indivisible. A party cannot credibly champion access to buildings and websites while supporting laws and funding settings that weaken the supports people require to exercise autonomy and participate in community life.

The question for NZ First is therefore straightforward, is this the beginning of a genuine change in direction, shaped and led by disabled people, or is it an attractive election year promise that leaves the coalition’s deeper disability policies untouched? We should engage with the Bill. We should acknowledge what is good in it. But we should demand much more before calling it disability-rights legislation.

References

Access Matters Aotearoa. (2026). Accessibility legislation. https://www.accessmatters.org.nz/accessibility-legislation

Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. (2022). Concluding observations on the combined second and third periodic reports of New Zealand (CRPD/C/NZL/CO/2-3). Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/concluding-observations/crpdcnzlco2-3-concluding-observations-combined-second-and-third

Marcroft, J. (2026, July. Accessibility Standards Bill [Draft Member’s Bill, version 1.4]. New Zealand First. https://img.scoop.co.nz/media/pdfs/2607/Accessibility_Standards_Billv1.4.pdf

New Zealand First. (2026, July. Establishing an accessible New Zealand for everyone. https://www.nzfirst.nz/establishing_an_accessible_new_zealand_for_everyone

New Zealand Government. (2024). Independent review of Disability Support Services: Phase one report. https://www.disabilitysupport.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/Independent-review/05_AUGUST-CABINET-Paper-Appendix-1-Independent-DSS-Review-redactions-applied-FINAL.pdf

New Zealand Parliament. (2026, May 21). Disability Support Services Bill—First reading. https://hansard.parliament.nz/hansard-transcript/2026-05-21/summary-offences-move-on-orders-amendment-bill

New Zealand Parliament. (2026). Proposed Members’ Bills. https://bills.parliament.nz/proposed-members-bills

Porter, R. J., Trip, H., Daffue, C., Fitzjohn, J., & Renison, P. (2025). The adverse impact of disability funding cuts on individuals with intellectual disability. New Zealand Medical Journal, 138(1609), 9–11. https://nzmj.org.nz/media/pages/journal/vol-138-no-1609/the-adverse-impact-of-disability-funding-cuts-on-individuals-with-intellectual-disability/a7bf5f6375-1739326142/1609-editorial.pdf

United Nations. (2006). Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-rights-persons-disabilities

Accessibility Legislation

www.accessmatters.org.nz