Terminology used in the AUT Disability Action Plan

Part of the development process for the Disability Action Plan was to seek staff and student feedback on the terms that we should use.

While we received a range of viewpoints, students recommended that we adopt the term ‘disabled student/staff/person’, as this reflects the way that factors such as the physical environment, societal attitudes, and systems disable a person. In response to feedback from members of our Deaf community, we extended this description to Deaf and disabled students.

The Disability Action Plan’s over-arching theme is to normalise the experience of being Deaf and/or disabled at AUT. This reflects the impact of inaccessible systems and practices, which create a significant administrative burden that our Deaf and disabled students and staff must carry in addition to their standard workload.

This acts as an additional barrier to their full participation in AUT life. The Disability Action Plan development process identified a number of these barriers; we are now working to remove or mitigate them through the Plan implementation process.