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Updated guide on supporting disabled people to live on an equal basis with others

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Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier, together with his Independent Monitoring Mechanism partners, has published an updated version of the ‘Reasonable accommodation of persons with disabilities in New Zealand’ guide with the new title - ‘Removing barriers: A guide for reasonable accommodation of disabled people in Aotearoa’.

This is a joint publication issued by New Zealand’s Independent Monitoring Mechanism (IMM) established under Article 33 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (the Disability Convention). New Zealand’s IMM consists of the Ombudsman, the Human Rights Commission and the Disabled People’s Organisations Coalition.

Reasonable accommodation is a key principle of the Disability Convention and is the practice of making changes which support disabled people to live their lives on an equal basis with others. The updated guide reinforces that reasonable accommodation is a human right and all New Zealanders – disabled and non-disabled people – have a right to be included.

It articulates this message by providing an understanding around what reasonable accommodation is, guidance on how it can be best practiced, and offers a number of real-life examples.

This guide is useful to ‘everyone’. Everyone, in this guide, means all government agencies, businesses, retail outlets, educational facilities, service providers, health facilities, private rental accommodation, detention facilities, and everyone else. Everyone has a right to be included. Everyone has the responsibility to make inclusion a reality.

Key changes to this guide include:

  • a greater focus on reasonable accommodation as a human right;
  • examples of implementing reasonable accommodation in real life; and
  • more specific guidance for both disabled people and organisations putting reasonable accommodation into practice.

The guide is available in a wide range of accessible formats.

Read Removing barriers: A guide for reasonable accommodation of disabled people in Aotearoa

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