1 in 4 New Zealanders have a physical, sensory, learning, or mental health impairment. People with disabilities make meaningful contributions in our community, but the world is not designed for disabled people and many misperceptions of disability remain. We all have a role to play in identifying and removing barriers to enable everyone to have choice and control in their lives, and to achieve their goals.
So what would it take to advance a disability-inclusive Aotearoa?
We teamed up with Everybody Cool Lives Here for our first event for 2023 in Te Whanganui-a-Tara to host a panel on accessibility and disability, with a focus on the arts. We were joined by Bailee Lobb, Sam Morgan (Rongowhakaata, Te Aitanga-a-Mahaki), and Dunc Armstrong, and the kōrero was facilitated by Jesse Austin-Stewart.
The hui began with a discussion of what disability and accessibility mean, and how these intersect with other aspects of the panelists’ identities as well as their practices. We then looked at some of the wider issues of accessibility within Aotearoa and the arts, and some of the barriers that the speakers have come across that need to be addressed.
Key takeaways from the hui are that we need to acknowledge that the world is built by and for people with disabilities, and that everyone doesn’t have the same opportunities. Everyone has the power to change things and to create space to normalise discussion of accessibility and disability issues! Accessibility is often an afterthought, and we all need to make it a priority to ask people what their access needs are.
You can check out a recording of the full hui below (NZSL available).
How to take the kaupapa forward
You can continue learning:
Listen to the podcasts: What’s Wrong With You?, The Arts Access Podcast (hosted by Sam Morgan), ListenAble, Disability After Dark, The Neurodivergent Woman, The Loudest Girl in the Room, and Able Audio (by Sam Morgan and Jesse Austin-Stewart, to be released in March 2023!).
Read blogs at All is for All and Arts Access Aotearoa
Read books like Growing Up Disabled in Australia (edited by Carly Findlay), Stim an Autism Anthology (edited by Lizzie Huxley Jones), and Disability Visibility by Alice Wong
Watch the Attitude docuseries What’s the Disabiliti-TEA? and Stella Young’s TEDx talk I’m not your inspiration, thank you very much
Upskill on the importance of language and framing here and here
You can show up:
Participate in NZSL Week, which will take place between May 9th and May 15th 2023.
Attend events to support artists in the disability community, like Big J by Jacob Dombroski and Everybody Cool Lives Here, as well as Touch Compass
Follow disability activists and tags on social media, such as Carly Findlay, Nine Tame, Andrew Gurza, Chloe Hayden, Cathy Reay, Amy Claire Mills, and #disabilityreads
Support local businesses run by members of the disability community and organisations like Arts Access Aotearoa
Follow content creators on Youtube like Jessica Kellgren Fozard, Stevei Boebi, and Hannah Whitton
You can engage with decision-makers:
Advocate for accessibility in your workplace or organisation by:
Asking people their access needs and advocating that this question and meeting access needs become a normal part of engaging with others
Actively looking for inaccessibility and pointing it out to management, be it people leaders or building management (e.g., not enough room between bays of desk, environment too noisy, lots of jargon or acronyms used)
Engage with Council on accessibility and inclusion
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