The New Accessibility Bill for New Zealanders needs a major overhaul to protect neurodiverse individuals and people with disabilities from ongoing discrimination, says Dyslexia Foundation of New Zealand.

The Parliamentary Social Services Select Committee is currently hearing submissions on the Bill. Tomorrow members of Advocacy Group Access Matters will converge on Parliament to deliver a 14,500+ petition calling for the Bill to be strengthened.

Guy Pope-Mayell, DFNZ Chair of Trustees, addressed the Select Committee yesterday in support of DFNZ’s written submission. He says discrimination is the inverse of accessibility.

“Unfortunately, the Bill as drafted is diluted and toothless. It appears to reflect the path of least resistance as determined by bureaucrats. And fails to enable lasting, meaningful and enforceable change,” he says.

“In short, the Bill needs to be much tougher to stamp out discrimination,” Pope-Mayell says.

“Discrimination is the elephant in the room here. And something that occurs every time a person cannot access the physical environment, transportation, and facilities and services open or provided to the public. Accessibility also applies to products, services, information and communications, including technology and systems right down to being able to shop online or navigate a website.

“Discrimination is systemic and deeply rooted in society. It’s everything from a lack of ramps for wheelchair access through to excluding a neurodiverse student from class because they seemed to be ‘behaving badly’,” Pope-Mayell says.

Neurodiversities such as dyslexia and autism spectrum impact upwards of 20% of the population – and neurodiverse tendencies such as being uncomfortable with eye contact, hypersensitive in stressful situations and difficulties processing information can often be misunderstood, Pope-Mayell says.

“In that situation, excluding a student because you jumped to the wrong conclusion, misunderstood their behaviour or couldn’t be bothered to get to the bottom of it amounts to discrimination.”

DFNZ, which has made a 10-page submission on the Bill, says the Bill must be toughened up to include:

• an inclusive definition of disability
• an extended scope to include persons conducting a business or undertaking (PCBUs)
• greater Committee powers
• a three-yearly review and timely accountability to the House of Representatives,
• accessibility standards,
• a regulator,
• a barrier notification system and
• a dispute resolution process to remove access barriers.

Traditional definitions and common understandings of disability are too narrow. Creating a truly accessible New Zealand doesn't only impact the blind or those in a wheelchair... it impacts us all as we get older, it impacts us when we have an accident, it impacts those with neurodiversity, or those with dementia. It impacts young parents who can’t get the pram through a doorway, or people with English as a second language.

Current legislation, for example the Human Rights Act 1993, is simply inadequate.

“While the Human Rights Act ‘prohibits’ discrimination on the basis of disability, it does little to practically address discrimination. It does not set clear and specific expectations for organisations or businesses on becoming fully accessible as employers and service providers. There are no standards and no penalties,” he says.

Overall, the Human Rights Commission and Human Rights Tribunal process is reactive, expensive, under-resourced and incredibly slow.

“It can take 3-5 years from the behaviour/incident to go through the process from the Commission to Tribunal decision. This not accessible to the average person, and it places the responsibility for change with the person who is the victim of discrimination, not the organisation that facilitated it,” Pope-Mayell says.

In contrast, the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 provides a much better model for effective legislation, as it promotes proactive behaviours and is able to compel change and deliver penalties, Pope-Mayell says.

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