Hey all, apologies for the lack of updates over the long weekend, I hope you all enjoyed your holiday! Now, I hate to start the new week off on a negative note so I’m just gonna put it out there: I hate using Auckland’s public transport system. Only around half the buses are wheelchair accessible. Of those, half again have drivers who don’t know – and are willing to argue with you – about whether they have a ramp onboard

I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be deafblind. Not in a perverse, gosh-how-bizarre way, but more to discover how someone copes without two of the senses we so often take for granted. To think that communication would be tactile only, and that so much of your worldly experience would be defined by touch, taste and smell, is mind-boggling to comprehend. So I set out to find a little bit more, and I happened across this blog entry

A Nelson child psychotherapist has spoken up, claiming he sees a handful of children referred to him each year for behavioural and mental health problems, when in reality, it turns out they have an undiagnosed intellectual disability. The doctor, Joe Babinski, spoke at the recent New Zealand Association of Child and Adolescent Psychotherapists conference, which aimed to identify gaps in current services. He says the kids he sees each year with unrecognised disabilities is just ‘the tip of the iceberg’

Great news for those of you living in the bewilderingly blustery city of Wellington, you now have your very own wheelchair accessible swing! The new swing (see the picture on the left, and click on it for a larger view) is located in Shorland Park in the suburb of Island Bay (a pretty place if I do say so myself), and was opened recently by NZ’s Governor-General, Anand Satyanand. (I didn’t know we had a new one!) It’s the 18th

Well here’s something I didn’t think was possible, along with the All Blacks winning the World Cup, except this one actually came to fruition – the Waitomo Caves now have a wheelchair accessible route through the Ruakuri cave! After an 18-year absence, the Ruakuri cave, one of several within the Waitomo caves area, reopened recently with a dramatic spiral entrance and 1.6km of guided walkway through the cave, where you get to experience everything from vast echoing caverns, deep crevices,

The battle of the coffee chains has begun. Shortly after CloseUp’s story on this site on TV One last night, I received an email from an Esquires staff member, promising a vastly superior experience to the one I had at Starbucks, which is located in the same building. So I had to go check it out, and I’m pleased to report: he was right! For a start, it’s a heck of a lot easier to access Esquires, as there are

To be honest, I profess to know very little about the Special Olympics, and the types of events competed in, but hopefully this post will bring me (and perhaps some of you!) up to speed with how our team has performed at the recent summer games in Shanghai. Firstly, huge congratulations are in order, after the team brought home 23 gold medals, 18 silver, and 18 bronze! This is a fantastic achievement, and from what I saw on the news

Update: Hey everyone, thanks for checking out the site! It doesn’t matter where you are in the country, if you’d like to contribute an “accessible” review, send it through to me at: head on over to the forums! With a bit of effort I reckon we can make this site the best disability site in the country Mark Sainsbury and I went for a wander around Auckland City today, filming a segment for TV One’s CloseUp show. The slot discusses

I’ve noticed that the rest of the world seems abuzz with disability awareness weeks at the moment, a quick trawl through the internet reveals various initiatives going on here, here, and here. My question for you is this: do we need a disability awareness week here in NZ? What could it accomplish? What activities/events would you like to see incorporated? Should we jump on this bandwagon, or are we already well served with awareness campaigns such as the upcoming Blind

Eden Park is the biggest and one of the oldest stadiums in New Zealand. It was used as a sports facility way back in 1900, even though it wasn’t much more than a swamp. These days, it seats more than 48,000 people, and in 1999, a brand new stand was built on the northern side of the stadium. With this flash new stand came some flash new seating for those in wheelchairs, so the question needs to be asked: how