Twelve recommendations for accessible governance in Aotearoa

Today more than one million New Zealanders have access needs, yet this number is not reflected on our boards or throughout the employment statistics in our organisations.

Globally, the access market is worth $13 trillion and is made up of a population the size of China. So how are we in Aotearoa ensuring our organizations understand the value that accessibility brings to our people, boards, organisations, and our future?

What is needed is leadership and commitment to address this huge and largely untapped opportunity.

Here are 12 powerful recommendations to ensure accessible governance becomes a reality in Aotearoa.

Training and development

• Ensure all governance training programmes are made fully accessible to the access community
• Ensure the governance professional development organisations, programmes, websites and communications are fully accessible
• Ensure all governance professional networking occasions are accessible.

Boards committed to becoming accessible need to

• Establish “why” accessibility is important to them and their organisation
• Position “access” as a strategic objective that informs all facets of the organisation - that it is not an exercise in minimum standards or a tick box of compliance that is sidelined under HR
• Decide how important it is and how much the Board is prepared to invest into becoming accessible
• Undertake professional development in being an accessible board - do the mahi and understand what it means to work “with” the access community
• Review the priority of access in their diversity policies: Is it the first or the last item on the list of diversity groups?
• embed access practices into their boards culture and operations
• Deeply understand who the contemporary access citizens are in 2021 and actively reject outdated and discriminatory ideas of who the disabled person or access citizen is
• Seek out an outstanding access citizen who is a good fit for the organisation and understand the value they bring to the board and organisation
• Have a process to review how well your accessibility commitment and programme is performing.

For more like this

1. Creating Space for Possibility - where Minnie Baragwanath (Global Centre for Possibility), Paul Curry – disability advocate, and Erin Roxbugh Makea discuss the obstacles for people with access needs in gaining equal access to employment opportunities and more.
2. Human Rights Commission's approach to the language around disability, recruitment and the Accessibility Charter.

For more information head to the MSD Toolkit which supports the public sector to build disability confident employment practices. The information and tools apply for any employer.  

About the author

Minnie Baragwanath has been an active and dedicated pioneer of an accessible Aotearoa for many years and is also the founder of Be.Accessible, the Be.Lab and now the Global Centre of Possibility at Auckland University of Technology.

The views expressed in this article do not reflect the position of the IoD unless explicitly stated.