The purpose of the act was to create rights and obligations in the use of NZSL throughout the legal system and to ensure that the Deaf community had the same access to government information and services as everybody else.

It uses more lip-patterns in conjunction with hand and facial movement to cue signs than BSL, reflecting New Zealand's history of oralist education of deaf people.

Its vocabulary includes Māori concepts such as marae and tangi, and signs for New Zealand placenames (e.g., Rotorua – mudpools,[5] and Christchurch – 2 Cs,[6] represents ChCh.

The first known teacher of sign language was Dorcas Mitchell, who taught the children of one family in Charteris Bay, Lyttelton Harbour, from 1868 to 1877.

In 1985, Marianne Ahlgren proved in her PhD thesis at Victoria University of Wellington that NZSL is a fully-fledged language, with a large vocabulary of signs and a consistent grammar of space.

[7] Other than a one-off course run in 1985, this was the first time a professional training programme with a qualification was offered in New Zealand.

This was discontinued in 1993 after a joint survey of deaf and hearing-impaired people found a majority favoured captioned programmes.

The full report of the inquiry, A New Era in the Right to Sign, was launched in Parliament by the Minister for Disability Issues, Tariana Turia, on 3 September 2013.

The second reading passed by 119 to 2 on 23 February 2006 with only the ACT party opposing, because the government was not providing funding for NZSL.

Victoria University of Wellington has courses in New Zealand Sign Language, although it has yet to develop a major programme for it.

Auckland University of Technology (AUT) offers a 3-year Bachelor of Arts course with an NZSL-English Interpreting major.