This page provides information about the accessibility of the Te Whatu Ora – Health New Zealand Waitaha Canterbury public website, it also provides information about health services associated with accessibility and disability.
A list of web pages with information about services that relate to disability or accessibility is below. Over time this page will be expanded to provide a more comprehensive range of Canterbury health service information for people living with a disability.
| Page / Document | Description |
| Getting ready – Being prepared – Disability Supplement | Information to assist people living with a disability, or someone with a long term health condition to plan for COVID-19 in the community. |
| COVID-19 care in the community – Be COVID-Ready – practical things you can do now |
If you are a person living with a disability, let the public health team know (they will have contacted you after your positive test was confirmed) and they will make sure you have the help you need to get you through. There is lots of information and resources in alternative formats and languages other than English linked from the Unite Against COVID-19 homepage. Click on the languages button top right on the Unite Against COVID-19 website for information in other languages and formats or chose one of these: COVID-19 information in New Zealand Sign Language COVID-19 information in Easy Read COVID-19 information in Large Print and Audio COVID-19 information – audio description COVID-19 information in Braille If you have specific health needs, also let the public health team know what you need. |
| Information about using health services during COVID-19 | Under all COVID-19 Alert Levels where hospital visitor restrictions are in place, an exception will be made for people living with disabilities who are in hospital or have to attend an outpatient appointment– where they need a support person to ensure equitable access to health services. For example a sign language interpreter, support person for someone with a learning disability, or someone to assist with mobility is allowed in addition to that person’s permitted visitor/s. |
| Disability / Mobility car parks at Christchurch Hospital Campus | If you are a mobility parking permit holder you can park in one of the designated mobility car parking spaces indicated by a wheelchair icon on the mobility car parking map. |
| Contacting us – I am deaf / have hearing loss. How can I contact you? | NZ Relay is a telecommunications service for people who are deaf, hearing-impaired, deaf-blind, or speech-impaired. All NZ Relay calls to us are confidential, your conversation and information is are kept private and secure. |
| Disability Steering Group (DSG) | The purpose of this group is to ensure people living with disabilities in the district have the health services they need, and feel included in decisions about their health. |
| Health Disability Action Plan (PDF, 600KB) | The DSG has the Health Disability Action Plan as the focus for its work. The Plan identifies short-term goals to be achieved in the first two years, and longer-term goals over the ten year lifespan of the Plan. |
An accessible website is one that accommodates a full range of people, removing barriers so that a website can be used by anyone, regardless of disability.
This website aims to achieve and maintain very good website accessibility, delivering as many WAI Level AA and AAA guidelines as achievable.
In February 2021 this website passed a WCAG 2 AA and WCAG 2 AAA check using the website accessibility testing tool www.achecker.ca. Although compliance with WCAG guidelines is not the only indicator of website accessibility, it does confirm that this website has a good basic level of accessibility and has been built in a professional and considerate way.
Due to the complexity and changing nature of accessibility compliance, it is challenging to consistently maintain 100% compliance with all accessibility best practices. However, as part of our commitment to meet the objectives of the Disability Action Plan, we do plan to continuously improve the accessibility of our website, so that Canterbury health services are accessible to all people.
You can use your browser and operating system settings to change how you view websites that you visit. For advice, we recommend visiting the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative's page on this topic.
Page last updated: 6 March 2024
Is this page useful?