Published 5 November 2026
Disabled people in Aotearoa New Zealand have been waiting a long time for meaningful accessibility legislation. Yesterday’s announcement from New Zealand First – a proposed Accessibility Standards Bill – acknowledges something that has been obvious to disabled people and their whānau for decades: our patchwork of minimum building standards, voluntary guidelines and unenforceable rules has not worked.
CCS Disability Action welcomes the direction. We also see some important ways this policy could be meaningfully improved. Our feedback refers to Jenny Marcroft’s Accessibility Standards Bill announced back in June, assuming the specifics will be the same.
This is not the first accessibility-related policy that has been announced: the Greens, Labour, and the Opportunities Party have all released disability policies, which you can find in our policy analysis.
What the proposed legislation would do
The core idea is sound. Rather than simply advising Ministers to think about accessibility, the proposed Accessibility Standards Bill would allow sector-specific accessibility standards to be developed. Banks, transport providers, government services, courts: these would need to meet actual requirements. A complaints pathway would sit alongside the standards, routed through the Human Rights Commission.
For anyone familiar with the 2022 Accessibility for New Zealanders Bill, this feels like progress. That Bill established an advisory committee. This one would establish standards and somewhere to complain when they aren’t met. That is a real advance on where we were.
What it doesn’t yet do
Three things need to change before this proposal can deliver what it promises.
Who’s covered?
The Bill’s current definition of disability covers people with “a long-term physical or sensory impairment”. People with learning disabilities, Autistic people, and people with mental health conditions are not in that definition. IHC has already called this out. Access Matters agrees. CCS Disability Action works with disabled people across the full range of impairments, and we know that the people most likely to be excluded from public life are often those this definition misses. Canada’s comparable legislation covers physical, mental, intellectual, cognitive, learning, communication, and sensory impairments, whether permanent, temporary, or episodic. That is the standard to reach.
Will anything actually happen?
The Bill says Ministers “may” direct standards to be developed. There is no requirement that they do so, no schedule for which sectors must be covered and by when, and no obligation to explain a delay. Ontario’s accessibility legislation set a 2025 deadline. Its own independent review concluded last year that the system was in crisis, with serious failures in leadership, oversight, and implementation. The lesson from Ontario isn’t that standards-based legislation fails. It’s that standards need deadlines, monitoring, and consequences. A law that permits good things to happen is not the same as one that requires them.
Who will check?
The proposal relies heavily on complaints. Someone encounters a barrier, makes a complaint, and the Human Rights Commission responds. That mechanism is important, but it means the burden falls on disabled people to identify the problem, work through the process, and persist. Australia’s Human Rights Commission has described exactly this problem in its own system in its submission on the Disability Discrimination Act 1992, calling for proactive compliance monitoring rather than waiting for people to complain. If we build a system designed around complaints, we’re still asking disabled people to do the heavy lifting.
What good legislation looks like
Canada provides useful machinery: inspections, compliance orders, enforceable standards, and penalties of up to C$250,000 per violation (Government of Canada). Great Britain’s Equality Act requires service providers to anticipate disabled people’s needs and make reasonable adjustments before anyone complains. These are not perfect systems. But they give weight to the obligation.
Good accessibility legislation doesn’t just open a pathway. It requires progress, checks that progress is happening, and provides real consequences when it isn’t.
What we’re asking for
CCS Disability Action wants to see accessibility legislation succeed. That means we need the following built in before this Bill reaches its final form.
A disability definition that includes the full range of impairments and conditions, including those that are temporary or episodic. A required programme of standards development with published timelines and clear accountability for delay. Proactive compliance monitoring – not just a complaints line. Meaningful involvement of disabled people and tāngata whaikaha Māori in designing the standards themselves, not merely being consulted once a draft exists. And enforceable remedies that don’t require a disabled person to sustain a lengthy legal process to get a barrier removed.
Cross-party agreement matters
This proposal comes from New Zealand First. The case for accessibility legislation doesn’t belong to any party.
The 2022 Bill received more than 500 submissions at select committee. That level of public engagement reflects a genuine community expectation. We’re calling on all parties to engage constructively with this proposal, to bring their own thinking about how to strengthen it, and to commit to legislation designed with disabled people, not for them.
The goal is legislation that actually removes barriers. Getting there requires Parliament to work together.
The proposal on the table is a starting point. Let’s make sure we don’t settle for that.