Through May to August 2007, the Office for Disability Issues contracted Litmus Ltd (a specialist research and evaluation company) to interview a mixture of disabled people, disability sector representatives, and government officials to talk about how they felt the New Zealand Disability Strategy implementation was going.

Initial results from this review show that:

• there is a lot of positive feeling and good will towards the New Zealand Disability Strategy
• there have been many achievements since 2001, and that real progress is being made to reduce barriers for disabled people so they can better participate in society
• non-government people (disabled people, disability sector organisations and service providers) felt there should be more and faster activity happening by government
• government people felt they would be helped by having more practical support on aspects of the New Zealand Disability Strategy and how they can go about implementing it.

It was also generally felt that there is much more work needed to achieve the New Zealand Disability Strategy’s vision of a fully inclusive society.

Officials will be considering how to ensure that sufficient information is collected over the next four years so that the ten-year evaluation of the New Zealand Disability Strategy implementation will have a strong evidence base.

More information will be available early in 2008 on this review of the implementation of the New Zealand Disability Strategy.