Perceptions of People with Disabilities on the Accessibility of New Zealand’s Built Environment

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors,

Thank you for your submission and contribution.

This is an important study and aligns well with sustainable development goal related to accessible and inclusive built environment. It also aligns well with the recommendations of the recent global disability summit and the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities which highlighted accessibility as a basic principle and a basic human right. 

Overall, the paper is well-written and informative. The study is well-planned and well-implemented. I have only few review comments, recommendations, and suggestions to improve paper overall readability. 

Abstract

Please make it more informative and add some more demographics and descriptive data for participants, such as age, gender, type of disability as mentioned (i.e., over 80% of the 319 survey respondents had mobility- and/or vision-related impairments). Please do so while still adhering to abstract word limit count. 

Keywords: it is recommended to arrange them in an alphabetical order. 

Materials and Methods

Would you please add recruitment method? 

Would you please report inclusion and exclusion criteria of survey respondents? 

Results 

Before reporting survey responses, would you please add demographics of respondents? I suggest adding one paragraph and a table for better visual representation and readability. 

Discussion 

Limitations: the current study was a survey-based study. To better assess accessibility of built environment, objective-based outcome measures are recommended, such as the the Americans with Disabilities (ADA) accessibility checklist for existing facilities. This allows you to measure buildings accessibility compliance rate and helps come up with possible solutions. You can add this as a current limitation and recommendation for future direction and future follow-up studies which could adopt a mixed method study (reference: Sarsak, H. I. (2018) Assessing building accessibility for university students with disabilities. MOJ Yoga & Physical Therapy, 3(4):69‒75. doi: 10.15406/mojypt.2018.03.00047.)

Many thanks.

Wishing you all the best in your scholar work. 

 

Author Response

Please refer to the attached document for our response to each of your comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors Page 2 - Table 1 is a bit confusing to me.  I get that it is a summary of the area and key findings, I just don’t understand how you chose the 3 areas and which studies you selected.  Perhaps you could clarify by indicating from what literature the three pertinent areas came from, then indicating whether the key research and findings are from prior literature reviews, etc.  

Page 2 - access audit tools - there are so many of these different kinds of tools, why are you highlighting AIMFREE (for gyms) when the purpose of your paper is to look at public environments.  Chose an example tool that is relevant to your topic.

  Page 2 - your paper’s purpose is about public spaces, but the research questions are about public buildings.  I would clarify the purpose to indicate that you are looking at public buildings.   Page 3 - Very good showing statistical power.  However, most of your respondents were people with mobility impairments, and I suspect that the percentage of the population with disabilities who have mobility impairments is less than your respondent percentage.  It would be good to compare your respondent breakdown with that of the NZ population of people with disabilities.  It would be good to understand how representative this sample is.  Otherwise, I am interested in the statistical power for the individual types of impairments.  You could also address why individuals with some types of impairments are more apt to respond to these types of access surveys.   Page 4 - Table 2 is provided without context.  Add a paragraph on the logic behind how the types of public buildings were categorized.   You could also address the issue of Table 2 now introduces public spaces in addition to public buildings.  I would keep consist throughout the paper.   The data in Figure 4 is very interesting.  Perhaps you can analyze the likelihood of an individual accessing the type of building (or should it only be building) with the perceived accessibility of the building.  Those that aren’t or aren’t perceived as accessible should see less use.   This is likely a nonissue, but find the use of PHI, PMI, etc. confusing.  Perhaps you can use a better acronym such as ‘Hearing’ and ‘Mobility’ rather than a designation that requires you to remember what it means.   The data provides represents a good overview of the issues in NZ.   Page 13 - For your consideration, perhaps the priorities should be differentiated by those from people with mobility impairments, those from people with other types of impairments, and those which are shared.  It would be interesting to see the differences.   Page 14 line 385 - It appears that you have the data as to why people don’t visit particular places.  Provide more information on this finding.      Please describe the analysis methods used to extract the findings from the survey data.  Were they discriminate at all?  Was this simply a count of the reported data?  Were categories collapsed or anything similar.  The methods need further explanation, in particular how the data was analyzed.   Good study worth publishing.  It could use more analysis/synthesis rather than just count report style findings.

 

Author Response

Please refer to the attached document for our response to each of your comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

As stated in the conclusion, the article provides a comprehensive overview of the current state of accessibility from the perspective of people with disabilities (PWDs). However, it does not provide a direct evaluation of the physical accessibility of public buildings. For this reason, the title should be reconsidered better to reflect the scope and content of the study.

Overall, the article presents valuable insights, and the sample size is sufficient to capture perceptions of accessibility barriers faced by PWD in public buildings across New Zealand. Nevertheless, the methodology reveals several gaps that limit the generalizability of the findings. A significant concern is the inclusion of a wide range of building types under a single analytical framework.

The frequency and type of use differ greatly between, for example, a church and a shopping mall. Moreover, critical variables such as the year of construction, whether the buildings have been renovated to meet accessibility standards, and architectural design differences are not considered. These factors can significantly affect accessibility and should not be treated uniformly. Due to this complexity, many studies choose to focus on a single building type for more precise analysis.

There are also several unanswered questions:

What was the response rate for each building type?

Is there a geographic distribution of responses? Given the architectural variability across cities, such a distribution could impact accessibility outcomes.

Was variability in architectural characteristics across different types of public buildings addressed?

Suggestions for Improvement:

Group buildings by type and function to facilitate more meaningful comparisons.

Include architectural variables, such as:

• Year of construction
• Recent renovations or not
• Accessibility codes at the time of construction
• Frequency of use by PWD

Provide greater clarity on response distribution and sampling strategy to enhance transparency and replicability.

Abstract

The article’s abstract does not clearly describe its contribution to the scientific community. It would benefit from explicitly stating how the findings advance knowledge in the fields of accessibility or disability studies.

Introduction

Although Table 1 provides a good overview of documents on accessibility, it would be helpful to explain the barriers in more detail.

It is not explained whether New Zealand regulations apply to public buildings (date), so the focus is on understanding why they are not being complied with, or what the gap is

Methodology

The methodology is brief, and several methodological aspects that require explanation are unclear.

How were the seven APP members selected, and what criteria were used to ensure diverse expertise?

What specific methods or frameworks did the panel use to co-design the survey questions?

Were any pilot tests conducted before the full survey rollout to assess the clarity or relevance of the questions?

How were participants recruited for the survey?

Were the phone surveys conducted by trained personnel with experience in disability communication? If not, why was it decided to exclude caregivers?

Were there any additional accommodations for people with cognitive or hearing disabilities? Or only visual impairment?

The age ranges of the participants are not provided, which could influence how specific barriers are perceived. Different age groups may experience or interpret accessibility challenges in distinct ways.

It is also unclear whether the buildings referenced by participants have undergone recent accessibility upgrades or whether they are older structures that have not been updated, which could potentially lead to more significant barriers.

Another factor that may shape participants’ perceptions is the frequency of use of each building type. For instance, a church typically used once a week offers a very different experience from a supermarket that may be visited two or three times a week.

Results

The paragraph from lines 129 to 132 would be more appropriately placed in the introduction, where it could help expand on the context provided in Table 1.

Additionally, I found the tables with participant comments difficult to read, partly due to the repetition of the same ideas later in the text. Since these tables represent one of the key contributions of the article, they should be summarized more effectively, perhaps by grouping similar themes or using visual aids (e.g., coding frameworks or thematic matrices) to enhance clarity and avoid redundancy.

Discussion

The discussion of the findings (lines 330-353) should be more clearly linked to existing literature. As currently written, it is unclear whether the authors are critically engaging with previous studies or simply restating common issues. Strengthening the connections with prior research would enhance the credibility and academic contribution of the discussion.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please refer to the attached document for our response to each of your comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for the improvements made to the manuscript and for addressing several of the previous comments, particularly in the methodology section. However, there are still some important issues that require further clarification and revision:

1. The abstract still does not clearly state the article's contribution to the scientific community. Please revise this section to make the novelty and significance of the study explicit.

2. Although Table 1 has been improved, the legislative context of New Zealand remains unclear. Please clarify what accessibility requirements tertiary or service buildings must comply with under New Zealand legislation.

3. You explain that the building types were chosen to represent common public places that everyone should be able to access. However, does New Zealand legislation contain specific classifications, definitions, characterizations, or restrictions for these types of buildings regarding accessibility? Please expand the text to clarify this aspect.

4. Figure 1 appears twice, which may be an editing or formatting issue. Please revise and correct this duplication.

5. At line 164, you mention “ease of access of 29 different types of public spaces,” but according to Table 2 these are building types and spaces. The difference between “types of buildings” and “types of public spaces” is not clear. Please ensure consistent terminology throughout the manuscript and provide a precise definition of the categories used in the study.I believe that improving these points will enhance the clarity and quality of the paper. Best regards.

Author Response

Please see the attached document for a summary of the revisions made to the manuscript.

Thank you for your review.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf