Creating accessible and welcoming spaces and places | Recreation Aotearoa

Guidance for indoor sport, recreation and aquatic facilities

Recreation Aotearoa, in partnership with Sport NZ Ihi Aotearoa and BarrierFree, have collaborated with people with lived experience and industry partners to develop this guidance. It focuses on practical ways to improve accessibility in both new and existing facilities, from early planning and design through to day-to-day operation.

The guidance provides detailed, practical advice for creating more welcoming, inclusive and accessible indoor sport, recreation, and aquatics facilities, including community recreation centres, fitness facilities, indoor courts, swimming pools, and associated amenities.

It is intended for anyone involved in the planning, development, design, management, operation or maintenance of indoor sport and recreation facilities, as well as people advocating for accessible indoor spaces.

Full guidelines

Please find a link to the Guidelines on SharePoint:

Creating accessible and welcoming spaces and places - book view (PDF 8.4MB)

Creating accessible and welcoming spaces and places - single page view (PDF 8.6MB)

Creating accessible and welcoming spaces and places - sing page view (Word 109.5MB)

Note: for the best experience in Word, use Read Mode. This keeps the document layout clear and easy to read.

Chapters

Please find a link to individual chapters on SharePoint. We recommend you start with Chapter 1 - Introduction and Chapter 2 - Before you get started.

Welcome and Contents

Welcome and contents - single page view (PDF 608KB)

Chapter 1 - Introduction

Chapter 1 - Introduction - single page view (PDF 279KB)

Chapter 2 - Before you get started

Chapter 2 - Before you get started - single page view (PDF 514KB)

Chapter 3 - People, Policies and Programmes

Chapter 3 - People, policies and programmes - single page view (PDF 1.1MB)

Chapter 4 - Place-Specific Design Guidance

Chapter 4 - Place-specific specific design guidance - single page view (PDF 5.5MB)

Chapter 5 - Appendices

Chapter 5 - Appendices - single page view (PDF 1MB)

Alternate format summaries

The New Zealand Sign Language summary is also underway and will be added to the website soon.

Easy Read summary

Creating accessible and welcoming spaces and places - Easy Read (PDF 1.7MB)

Creating accessible and welcoming spaces and places- Easy Read (Word 7.1MB)

Note: for the best experience in Word, use Read Mode. This keeps the document layout clear and easy to read.

New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) summary

Coming soon

Large Print summary

Please find a Large Print summary on Sharepoint:

Creating accessible and welcoming spaces and places - Large print summary (Word 773KB)

Creating accessible and welcoming spaces and places - Large print summary (PDF 533KB)

Audio summary

Please find a link to listen to an audio summary on SharePoint:

Creating accessible and welcoming spaces and places - Audio summary (MP3 1.2MB)

Creating accessible and welcoming spaces and places - Audio summary (WAV 34.6MB)

Braille summary

Please find a link to the braille summary on SharePoint:

Creating accessible and welcoming spaces and places - Braille summary (BRF 3KB)