Callum McMenamin on Accessibility Standards

Kia ora, I'm Callum McMenamin and I work as an accessibility consultant for Open Access and I help to make apps and websites more accessible for disabled people.

Probably the biggest action that we need to improve accessibility in New Zealand is high-quality accessibility standards that define what it means for something to be accessible. And these things need to apply to all areas of life. For instance, like EFT-POS payment terminals at stores, the websites we interact with. And it should also um apply to all of the private businesses that we interact with like restaurants and cafes.

Beyond that, once we've got those standards, they need to be properly enforced. For instance, New Zealand has the broadcasting standards authority where we have standards for broadcasters and an authority that enforces those standards. But for something even more important than broadcasting like accessibility, we don't have any kind of regulator or enforcement system.

The thing that would make the biggest difference in people's everyday lives is seeing those accessibility standards enforced throughout all areas of life.

So, an example that I use is EFT-POS payment machines that you pay for things in stores with. So, for instance, we're seeing a lot of touchscreen EFT-POS terminals proliferating throughout New Zealand and these aren't very accessible for blind people. Even when you try and use things like contactless payment, like Paywave, it'll ask you a question on the screen that you need to have vision in order to see. Accessibility really does affect every area of life. And that's just one small example.

The thing that needs to change right now is we need to start seeing our politicians actually take accessibility seriously. Under our previous term of government, we saw an Accessibility for New Zealanders bill, but all that did was attempt to set up a working group that had no actual powers. Under our current parliament, we see no intention to create enforceable accessibility laws. In fact, we're seeing the repeal of accessibility legislation with the Plain Language Act repeal bill.

The thing that needs to happen right now is we need to stop this regression that is occurring and we need to start seeing our politicians proposing better ways forward that are guided by the disabled community.