We face struggle in this country every day to access education, employment, transport, access information, to buy products and to use services, but it shouldn't be this way. My name is Juliana Carvalho, I'm a disability activist from Brazil, I've been living in New Zealand for 12 years now, and I'm the lead campaigner for the Access Matters of Teroa. So I became a disability activist the day one that I sit in a wheelchair, and that was 22 years ago, when out of the blue I just had a massive inflammation in my spinal cord, and my life changed. We people with disabilities, everybody either has a disability now or gets one later. We're the minority of everyone. The bill that is now before the New Zealand Parliament is very good on intention, and exceedingly deficient, in fact completely empty when it comes to actual action. Let's get to the bottom line here. We live in a world here in New Zealand, back in Canada, everywhere, we live in a world that is built, organized and operated pervasively but unintentionally on a fundamentally ridiculous first premise. The bill that the government is proposing is really quite offensive actually, and I think we can do hugely better. I will hold the frustration for you, because actually I think you need your representatives in Parliament to be pissed off with this. There's no ability for people who want to do the right thing, who want to make things accessible, to be able to do it. The disabled community is not a minority, the disabled community is in a very real sense everybody, our whole whanau and our whole society. We believe people with vision loss deserve equal access to public spaces, information and careers. And as Blind, Low Vision ends, no goal is too ambitious, too big, we take it on with pride and with the necessary energy and passion. I joined the Access Matters campaign back in 2017, and I've been tirelessly working as a volunteer to make New Zealand a better place for people with disabilities and access needs. What I hope comes from this day and this gathering of all people is awareness of accessibility, not just for disabled people, but for everyone in Aotearoa. I think today is the pinnacle, you know, we do have a bill in the House because of the work that we've done, but we need this bill to be strengthened, to really be fit for purpose and remove and stop creating new barriers for people with disabilities. Until this bill is strengthened, New Zealand is going to continue paying a big cost. And I want to say I'm frustrated that you have had to do that because we have had evidence for a bloody long time that those barriers exist. The necessity, not only for the disabled people who live right now, but for the future of New Zealand. The future is becoming accessible, New Zealand just needs to catch up. Our politicians are not listening to what people with disabilities have to say. They're trying to suppress our voice. We removed the tape and we said out loud that we won't be accepting being treated as second class citizens. You know, we're deserving of the human rights that many people take for granted.
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Disability Activism in New Zealand by Access Matters Aotearoa (2023)
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Disability Activism in New Zealand
by Access Matters Aotearoa - INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARIES
