NZSL Share

Privacy notice




NZSL Share cares about your privacy and wants to be open with you about what we do with your personal information.

This Privacy Notice describes how we collect, use, and share personal information and explains your rights in relation to those activities.

We must comply with the Privacy Act 1993, the Public Records Act 2005 and, if you are in the European Union, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

If you would like to get in contact with us, you can email us at privacy@vuw.ac.nz or call 0800 VICTORIA (842 867).

Who are we?

NZSL Share is owned by the Deaf Studies Research Unit at Victoria University of Wellington.

We maintain a website:

We have a Facebook page:

We maintain a Twitter account:

Why do we collect your information?

We collect your information in order to:

These are our ‘purposes’ or ‘legitimate interests’.

How do we collect information?

We collect information about you in two ways:

Information that you provide to us

This is information provided through your discussions and interactions with us and includes

Information we automatically collect

Information is collected through your use of our website (including via cookies).

We use cookies on our site where they are required for particular features to work – for example, if you are a logged in user, to allow you to remain logged in whilst you complete certain tasks.

We also use tracking cookies to analyse non-identifiable web traffic data to improve our services.This data is aggregated and cannot personally identify you. You can opt out of this at any time.

We use Google Analytics to track use of our website.

Read more about managing your cookie settings: https://www.victoria.ac.nz/site-info/cookies

What information do we collect?

The information we collect depends on your involvement with NZSL Share.

1. Browse the site

What you can do:

Information we collect:

2. Create an account:

What you can do:

What information we collect:

3. Apply to become an approved NZSL Share member

What you can do:

Everything an account holder can do, and;

What information we collect:

4. Be a Validator

Validators are NZSL Share members who we invite to help us give feedback on NZSL signs. We use your feedback to decide if a sign should be included in the NZSL Online Dictionary.

What you can do:

Information we collect:

You may choose not to provide these details for us, but if you do, we may not invite you to be a validator, or we may not send you specific surveys (it is important for us to know these details for language variation research).

How long do we keep personal information?

We keep your information for as long as you have an NZSL Share account.

If you choose to delete your account:

We will keep the following information:

This information is kept indefinitely for the purpose of linguistic research, but you can request that we remove this information.

Other personal information (e.g. emails that you sent us) will be deleted after three years unless we need to retain it for longer to comply with our legal obligations.

Who will have access to your information?

Our staff will have access to your personal information only where they have a genuine need to do so. We will not share your information with anyone unless permitted or required by law (including the Privacy Act 1993 and Education Act 1989).

How do we keep your information secure?

We take all reasonable steps to keep your information safe and secure. In some instances, your personal information may be transferred, and held, by service providers in New Zealand and overseas (for example, where it is stored using a cloud-based service). Where this occurs, we do everything reasonably within our power to ensure that the service provider also has reasonable security measures in place to protect your information.

We will not transfer your information to an overseas-based service provider unless we are satisfied that the service provider has obligations to protect your information in a way that is comparable to the protections afforded by New Zealand privacy law.

What are my rights?

You have the right to ask for a copy of any personal information we hold about you, and to ask for it to be corrected if you think it is wrong (and you are unable to update it yourself through a relevant online service). If you would like to do this, please email dsru@gmail.com.

We will respond to your request as soon as reasonably practicable and no later than 20 working days after we receive it.

You also have the right to make a complaint to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner if you think we have breached, or may have breached, your privacy. You can contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner at www.privacy.org.nz.

In addition, the GDPR gives you the right to: