Information about family violence and sexual violence (FVSV), people’s rights, and what kinds of services isn’t often provided in accessible formats (such as Easy Read, New Zealand Sign Language [NZSL], visual communication, or even plain language). 

When information is complex, or hard to find, understand and use, it becomes harder for:

• violence, abuse or neglect to be identified or detected 

• people to feel safe about reporting harm 

• people to know where to go for support 

• informed consent to be obtained 

• safe disclosures to be made (this means people being abused, or at risk of abuse, feeling safe to tell someone about the abuse) 

• harm being recognised by the person being abused (for example, when the abuse has been normalised, or perhaps carried out by a family member or by someone in authority, whose actions aren’t questioned).

Accessibility is often treated by service providers as optional rather than a core safeguarding requirement. 

Evidence shows that there are many barriers that can prevent or limit access to help. These barriers can be: 

• Physical: such as access to buildings being via stairs rather than ramps, lack of accessible toilets, swing doors rather than sliding doors.  

• Sensory: where services are provided in areas that are too busy, too crowded, too noisy or too brightly lit for some neurodivergent people. 

• Digital: requiring access to computers, laptops, smart phones or other technology, and requiring skills and confidence in using online and digital formats. 

• Transport-related: lack of public transport or ability to pay for a taxi or hired car to get to services. 

• Procedural: too many actions or tasks required by the service provider or organisation, or confusion about what’s required to support any request for help (especially when dealing with a different staff member each time or if you’re asked to provide different information each time). 

• Practice-based:  organisations or professionals not being aware of or equipped for disabled people’s personal needs (for example, people with learning disabilities might need extra time to process information and discuss what’s happening; a Deaf person might need NZSL; a person with English as a second language might need access to a translator). 

• Psychological: people not feeling safe to raise or discuss the violence, abuse or neglect they’re experiencing, or feeling too ashamed to tell someone else. 

These barriers are often even greater (more prevalent) in regional and rural communities due to distance, lack of services, and people’s lack of access to online systems or tools (such as computers and laptops) – or the lack of privacy, in a small community. 

Attitudinal ableism and credibility bias

• When trying to share their real and valid experiences of harm or abuse, disabled people are frequently disbelieved, or pathologised (meaning their experiences are treated as symptoms of their impairment or mental health – rather than as actual situations, they’re experiencing), or they find that their experiences are minimised. 

• Abuse is reframed as “care issues” or as a misunderstanding, minimising the situation and the need to understand and address what’s happening. 

• Assumptions are often made about the person’s capability, parenting / caregiving, or communication – and these also minimise the situation and reduce safety and trust.

• Services (for disability, FVSV, health, justice, and housing) operate in silos and with poor inter-agency co-ordination. 

• Survivors must repeatedly retell trauma to different organisations, and to different people within organisations, which creates a significant barrier for them in seeking support. Having to repeatedly tell their story, re-traumatises people who have experienced abuse. 

• Often the responsibility for navigating complex systems or requirements, both within and across government agencies or other service providers, is pushed onto those people needing support, leaving them feeling isolated, confused, frustrated, misunderstood and incapable. 

• Systems prioritise process and compliance (i.e. the need to meet the organisation’s or system’s requirements) over the disabled person’s dignity and safety.

• Communication supports, information, or services are withheld, used coercively, or are inconsistently provided. (“Used coercively” means supports or services are used to pressure, control, or influence a person, rather than to support their rights, safety, and enable an informed choice). 

• Complaints pathways are often difficult to access and can be intimidating or ineffective. 

• Disabled people experience the system as unsafe, unhelpful, unfair or punitive. 
  

• Weak or unclear leadership responsibilities within organisations reduce people’s follow-through and trust. 

• The lack of ‘disability-specific FVSV data’ limits organisational insights and understanding, and prohibits (stops) system-based planning. This impacts the effectiveness of systems for disabled people. 

• Historic consultation fatigue heightens scepticism. This means that some disabled people feel that, in the past there’s been a lot of consultation – to the point that people get tired of being asked – and especially as they also feel that nothing comes of seeking their views. They don’t feel heard, they don’t see the results of their input, and therefore they don’t feel respected.