Month: October 2025

Introduction

My relatives and friends have been sending me stories about a disability advocate’s unhappy encounter with our federal Minister for Health and Ageing who is also Minister for Disability and the NDIS.

I don’t want to rehash the story in detail. In brief, the advocate in a wheelchair arrives at the minister’s electoral office. It’s an old building with nice steps. There’s a bell to be pressed for goods delivery and wheelchair access. But it doesn’t work. The advocate is annoyed, understandably. The minister then argues with the advocate about whether the bell works. He is wrong.

The story made the news, but for what I think are the wrong reasons. I entirely understand that the popular media are no place for a nuanced discussion of what is important here. Below I want to reflect on a few themes arising from this incident that I think are important.

An absence of malice

The founding chair of my former employer’s Disability ERG was a regional manager in the southwest of the state. He tells of how, soon after he took on this role, he had asked his staff to arrange a meeting in another regional town. When he arrived at the venue, he discovered it wasn’t wheelchair accessible and he couldn’t get in. 

It wasn’t that nobody knew he used a wheelchair, it was just that it hadn’t sunk in – and what was normal was what dominated choosing the venue. Telling the story demonstrated two things – a principle and good humour.

Around the same time that I heard this story, I had to go to the Sydney CBD to attend a day-long course. I got to the venue and discovered steps, which I decided to climb, using an overly thick and ornate handrail. But it ended with 4 steps to go. I descended with some difficulty. I rely on Canadian crutches to stay upright and walk.

I didn’t have the venue’s phone number, so I rang the L&D team who organised the course. It took around 35 minutes before somebody from the training venue guided me through an obscure door, along a dark corridor and up a lift. Nobody had thought to wonder whether the venue was accessible or where participants had access needs.

In the story about the minister’s office nobody had checked whether the bell worked. This was probably because it hadn’t been needed in years. The Disability Advocate observed that he was taken to the goods entrance which had a ramp that didn’t have grab rails and that at the top of the ramp there was a table which had to be moved. Inside there was no place for him to wait.

The likely reality is that he might have been the first person in a wheelchair to visit in ages, or ever. Staff would not be thinking about wheelchair access – unless doing so was the norm.

A few years ago, I dropped into a Mac Donalds off a freeway. I went to the accessible toilet and found it full of boxes, which I struggled to move out of the way. I later spoke to the manager who said nobody used the toilet and they needed storage space. Likewise, I went to an accessible toilet in a small office of a division in my department. It was being used as a storeroom and would have been inaccessible to anyone in a wheelchair. Again, the local manager said nobody had used the toilet in the time they had been there, and they needed the storage space.

We mustn’t mistake lack of awareness for disrespect – even if we might feel put out and inconvenienced. Sometimes it’s just about what is usual and normal – and hence what is in our consciousness.

Access

Building designed to ensure that people with mobility disabilities have access are now the standard. They weren’t 40 years ago. Some buildings can be retrofitted with ramps and accessible doors. Some can’t because of design integrity or heritage considerations – or cost. There are legally protected limits on what should be spent to make a building accessible.

Religious and cultural traditions have made disability shaming because we celebrated the ideal – the perfect – the unblemished. The blemished were unworthy of being sacrificed or celebrated. This heritage meant that those not capable of their own unimpeded mobility were not thought of as fit to be in public. The same was true of many forms of disability.

This wasn’t necessarily a conscious thought; it just baked into our sense of normal. We could honour disabled veterans while excluding them from public places and buildings by habituated thought. There was no malice in this exclusion – just habits of mind that began to shift in the 1960s in a general rejection of old exclusionary habits.

Angst

It is understandable that mobility disabilities that force reliance on aids like wheelchairs, rollators and crutches will lead some to frustration about the degree to which our world remains persistently inaccessible.

I do not like travelling because most of those hotels and motels which claim to be inaccessible are not. The toilets and showers are rarely accessible. My brother just yesterday told of how he arrived at a shopping centre in an outer Brisbane suburb and found no cutout so he could get his electric wheelchair from the street to the footpath. This could expand into a list many pages long and still not exhaust the supply of complaints.

Frustration of our wishes and desires for access and liberties is a shared human theme. There are many things we ‘should’ be allowed to do that we aren’t for reasons that come down to old habits of thought, old ways of doing things and traditional forms and structures.

People with mobility disabilities are not especially entitled. Our fellow citizens are not hyper alert idealists who design things based on the most inclusive set of options. Rather they design according to what is normal and usual – unless guided by standards required by law or an especially inclusive philosophy.

As a person with a significant disability who sometimes envies wheelchair users, I know the personal sense of frustration that comes when I do not have access to a place I’d like to get to. But I also know that mostly the lack of access isn’t down to malice or intransigence. It may be down to reluctance to accommodate my needs when doing so incurs a high cost or creates a significant disadvantage. 

For instance, when I was still in hospital recovering from GBS I went on an outing in a wheelchair. Among other things I wanted to buy a jacket. The only shop that was accessible was a large chain store. Inside the floor was carpeted and this made moving the wheelchair very difficult. The racks with the jackets were so close together that at wheelchair level it was like moving through dense bush. It was a difficult and unpleasant experience. The alternative was no carpet on the floor and a wider space between racks. The store might have objected that what suited me would have reduced available space to display goods and making the store’s floor wheelchair friendly would be an uneconomic cost.

There is resistance against inclusive design partly because current situations are in place and the cost of change is not insignificant. It’s also partly about perceived need. I regularly drive my housemate up to a shopping centre. I sit in the car while they head off. They are very slow, so I have time to sit in the car in an accessible parking spot and write, listen to audiobooks and watch. I am writing this at the end of October 2025. In the past 10 months I have seen maybe 6 users of accessible parking spots using mobility aids – and I am sitting there usually 4 days a week. That suggests to me that shoppers with mobility aids are scarce and that the ‘normal’ is that they hardly exist – and are certainly not worth designing a shopping experience around. Catering to their needs isn’t a reflexive option. The ‘normal’ rules dominate.

I can understand this reality while not agreeing with it. I am a fan of inclusive design – but there’s a difference between retrofitting and new works. There are some realities we just have to suck up and others we should engage with and demand different and better. Knowing the difference is very important.

The thing that struck me about the story about the disability advocate and the minister is the sense of personal affront I discerned from the advocate. While his issues were largely valid, he seemed to me to have assumed an entitlement to unimpeded access. He may have been the first ever wheelchair user to seek to enter the building. Of course it was not going to be set up for him.

He observed, on a current affairs show, that the sign on the building indicating the then dysfunctional bell mentioned deliveries before wheelchairs – suggesting that it showed that able-bodied delivery people were given precedence over people in wheelchairs. Might it be that there were simply way more people delivering stuff to the building and their health and safety needs were top of mind because they were more frequent? Hence the order on the sign signified what was top of mind of the sign maker, not any sense of priority of dignity for those who might need access. People carrying loads are at greater risk than a person in a wheelchair. 

The inaccessibility of our shared world has a personal impact. Things have changed since the 1960s and it’s now reasonable to expect accessibility in many more circumstances. But it is not a ‘right’ in itself. 

There are many instances where being denied dignified access may be an affront. When access is assured and then not delivered because of beliefs, attitudes or behaviours of people who ought to know better it might be a good reason to be cranky. 

But making matters personal can backfire. People react differently to being called to account on a perceived failing if the reaction is about the person rather than the principle. This is certainly the case if blame is assigned and personal fault is implied when the situation really calls for neither. Yes, sometimes ignorance and arrogance can be galling, but making yourself a victim distracts from the focal concern. 

It’s not how to do advocacy.

Advocacy

It is interesting to observe the number of people who style themselves as a disability advocate but who have a relatively facile understanding of disability, the world in which it is experienced and the people who are vital actors in the interests of people with disability.

A common ploy is to resort to a version of the moral theme that people with disability are victims of an uncaring world and that they are heroic. The most commonly seen ‘advocate’ is in a wheelchair. In fact, the international symbol for disability is a stylised image of a person in a wheelchair. Wheelchairs trigger empathy and sympathy for good reason. But that doesn’t magically transform the occupant into being knowledgeable and insightful. Having a disability just makes you a person with a disability.

Advocacy isn’t a performance signified by a recognised image. I want to be fair in the sense that disability is so complex that it is not reasonable that one person with the lived experience of disability can be expected to represent people with disability in general. So, a wheelchair user can be a great advocate for other wheelchair users.

Maybe the issue here is one of perception and language. If we think disability isn’t complex, we will expect that a single advocate may have universal insight. Similarly, those who style themselves as disability advocates may believe that their experience of disability qualifies them to be seen in that general capacity.

Before I acquired my disabilities in 2008, I have been involved with disability going back decades in various jobs. With my employer at the time, apart from the 18 months off work when I had to deal with my disability, at least 19 of the 19.5 years of service were related to disability (frontline and administrative). During that time, I was a founding member of a Disability ERG (2010) and its lead for 3.25 years (2011-2022). Since July 2021 I have been a member of my local government’s disability access advisory committee.

Even with that background I am cautious about being thought ‘expert’ on disability or disability inclusion. I have an informed perspective that may be of benefit to some.

Advocacy has many colours and textures, so it’s good to know who you are as an advocate, or if you are a person with disability, what the person asserting their role as an advocate is actually about – you or them?

Conclusion

Disability Inclusion is evolving as an aspiration. We now have rights that are supported by legislation and policies. The expectation of inclusion is now universal, although practice is yet to catch up. The lag is down to basic things like resources, cost, the limited power of compliance and attitudes uniformed by contemporary developments. 

We need to understand that legislation and policy have limited reach. All individuals in their private lives can ignore asserted and agreed rights. This applies in many other areas of rights as well. 

The moral argument has been won, but that doesn’t mean we can insist that all others comply – or agree. We can, of course, take action in the face of beaches of relevant laws. But that is often a distasteful, unpleasant and costly option, undertaken only as a last resort.

The better option is persuasion. An advocate is somebody who speaks, pleads or argues in favour of a cause. But an advocate doesn’t have to be skilled or even know much about the cause they are acting in favour of. Frequently they are neither skilled nor knowledgeable. This is, I believe, a chief reason that Disability Inclusion isn’t progressing as swiftly as it could.

Because of the crisis precipitated by the politicisation and commercialisation of DEI, Disability Inclusion risks becoming diminished as a genuine cause. Performative or politicised advocacy can deflect attention from the real issues of equity and dignity. Matters are made more problematic by the growth in the identity politics movement which embraces disability as a desired identity.

We must make our own choices about what we see as desirable attributes in a disability advocate. There isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ option realistically available. We can favour getting practical outcomes that make our lives better or outcomes that make us feel vindicated as a victim of other people’s attitudes. We won’t find both in one person.

Disability Inclusion is a deeply complex field. It is more than what most people want to know about. We want our needs met and the esoteric stuff can be left to academics. But we need to be clear about our needs well before we go looking for someone to speak on our behalf.   

Introduction

When I started this blog back in late 2021, I relished the opportunity to finally have time to catch up on a backlog of reading into Disability Inclusion and DEI generally. I was quickly disappointed. There was little in the way of insight and a great deal of stuff written by inclusion consultants who seemed to be primarily part of an industry with little capacity for self-reflection. 

In late January this year (2025) Iris Bohnet and Siri Chilazi published Make Work Fair in response to a politically motivated backlash against DEI in the US.  In October Andrew Doyle published a substack essay – The Death Rattles of DEI. This was a caustic polemic against something about which I had already developed a deep scepticism. 

Commenting on a well-known presenter on DEI, Doyle observes, 

“The half-hearted poeticism barely masks the anxiety of man who fears that his racket has been exposed. The predominance of the creed of DEI, and its

usurpation of meritocracy as the guiding principle in the corporate world, is a

testament to the success of culture warriors. They have made plenty of know-

nothings very wealthy by promoting ideology as though it were uncontested

truth. But now it might well be coming to an end.”

Earlier I had spent a few months delving into the toxic world of identity politics. I was surprised and dismayed by what I found. There were 5 books that shaped my response – We Have Never Been Woke, The End of Woke, Free Speech and Why It Matters, Against the New Politics of Identity and Cynical Theories.

In response I articulated my sense of a Functional Disability Theory (FDT). See Why I needed my Functional Disability Theory from August. I felt a need to review my earlier thoughts on DEI and establish a clear sense of where I stood on disability and identity.

Below I want to reflect on these ideas because I believe it is vital that Disability Inclusion advocates must develop a lucid position on what is happening. I am not saying mine is the position to be adopted, only that it is one position of many – one that dissents from most of that many. My concern is that, given the sensitivities, advocates will be best served in meeting their objectives if they are clear about what they think and believe.

Finding the calm in the storm

The emotional heat Doyle brought to his essay reminded me that critiquing beliefs and practices can seem to be fair enough but often causes collateral damage. Some DEI practitioners are deeply committed and doing good work. Some are professional and others are just passionate. But passion can be misdirected, miscommunicated and misinterpreted.

Well-intentioned people are doing the best they can. And sometimes this can be spectacularly inept. Nothing is uniform. DEI comes in many flavors – and some are unpalatable. Doyle’s reaction is spot on in important respects. DEI is about organizational, social and personal psychology and not about smooth talking performers spouting ineffectual bullshit for handsome fees. It is about a professional practice based on knowledge and insight.

Back in 2000 I explored the idea of personal praxis in my Social Ecology course. It took me quite some years to mature my early thoughts into a useful insight. I was helped by contracting GBS which led to me spending 18 months trying to make my body work again. I still have significant disabilities, but I am grateful things are as good as they are. It could have been so much worse. 

Regardless of the opinions (send him to a nursing home) and the expertise of physiotherapists everything came down to what I was prepared to do. I needed an attainable and workable objective, a theory of how to get there, and the determination to put in the very considerable effort necessary. Even as a patient I needed a praxis.

Praxis is an under-used term. Wikipedia describes praxis as “the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted, embodied, realized, applied, or put into practice.” Reflection and review are a vital part of the process. Again Wikipedia is helpful in its description of action learning – “an approach to problem solving that involves taking action and reflecting upon the results.”

The purpose of DEI is to generate and guide positive change for individuals and yet it seems often that the ideas of neither praxis nor action learning have entered the heads of its champions. This is regardless of the fact that DEI is a novel and complex endeavour. Many go no further than seeing it as a good idea that can be engaged with in a rewarding way.

It is easy to criticize others or be intimidated or offended or annoyed by them. In the swirling storm of passions about DEI, Wokeness and Identity Politics none of it now seems of any use to me. It was handy to be aware of it and try to understand what is going on. That now seems like a vastly complex task that yields practical value. I am glad I asked the questions and sought, but I am also grateful I feel no impulse to become further involved. 

My goal, with my notion of FDT, is to focus on what works to address access, inclusion and dignity needs in the most effective way. 

Exclusion is often the first thing advocates for inclusion practice. 

Back in 2019 I was invited to attend a meeting run by another agency’s Disability ERG. There were only a handful of participants present. I asked about their relationship with the agency’s executive. There was none. They had made no attempt to engage the agency’s leadership at all. I was initially stunned. Then I understood that here the ERG was modelled on a union whose primary mode was contestation rather collaboration. 

The function of a Disability ERG isn’t to solve inclusion problems itself but to work with its agency to help it meet its responsibilities. That will include insight-driven leadership. 

Our default mode is moral assertion – often assigning blame for perceived failings. We assume that the mere assertion of a moral duty is sufficient to induce action and any failure to act is a moral failing for which the other party is to blame. It is easy to see how this can escalate into conflict. We assume and assert the moral high ground and assign culpability to those who do not agree or comply. It’s the way we do politics on a global scale and often how we do relationships on a personal scale.  It’s not a functional way to achieve inclusion, however – no matter how self-satisfying we might feel.

I observed to my department’s Secretary some time ago that there was an abundance of goodwill across the agency. What we needed to figure out was how to activate it in service of our inclusion goals. Admonition was not the way to go. We needed a more subtle approach. We had to become genuinely inclusive – working with the many moods and modes of the staff to excite a common desire to be more inclusive. 

This challenge led us to be aware of when we slipped back into default mode and began applying blunt moral force.  We needed to understand the difference between the motive force of goodwill and the cognitive capacity to engage with it. 

DEI practitioners seem to often rely on the ‘low hanging fruit’ of inherent goodwill and fool themselves into believing they are responsible for initial positive responses to DEI efforts. But when the easy good outcomes dry up and the hard work begins, they can fall back on admonitions or blaming others for being resistant.

We have now dropped the idea of New Year’s Resolutions because we finally comprehend that we rarely have the capacity to engage the cognitive energy to break habits or prioritize one set of thoughts and feelings over another. 

In short, if we want to trigger inclusive action we must demonstrate it. This means being patient and forgiving of those who fail to do what they signal they want to do. 

By focusing moral imperatives, we are bringing rocks to a gunfight. Over the past 50 years research into our psychology has yielded a breathtaking amount of insight into how to influence our behaviour. This insight has been employed by those who seek profit and advantage and only by a minority of people who desire to do good. 

The art of positive persuasion – of changing behaviour for good outcomes – isn’t easy to learn because it first requires us to be honest and insightful about ourselves. It is far easier to manipulate others to our advantage than to persuade them to act to shared and mutual advantage.

My early exploration of DEI practitioners suggested that virtually none of them had developed this insight. There was a practical reason here. Delivering a training session had to be a business proposition resulting in a pay day. Developing the art of positive persuasion takes practice grounded in insight and determination. That’s unattractive to a business wanting a quick fix. Generally, the organization, its staff and the provider are on the same page here. The quick ‘fix’ works for all. Except the ‘fix’ meets only compliance needs and while it may give a warm glow to participants it doesn’t move the needle far beyond what natural good will would do.

Beyond moral

Our desire for greater inclusion is sensible. As our communities evolve to be more complex and pluralistic, so our values must change. Once, we built public buildings that made no provision for people with mobility disabilities. Now, in most places that is unthinkable.

We think these changes are moral. But I disagree. I used to think that. But I don’t think that failing to make building access is a moral lack, so much as a perceptual and conceptual one. Our perceptions change and, to ensure that those changes are reflected in our life-worlds, decisions must be made and funds allocated. There might be moral issues arising from decision-making processes though. 

Our instinct is to see anything requiring cognitive effort as a threat. With this wired into our brains we can see why learning can be so unpopular. We’d rather be having fun, taking it easy. For those for whom exclusion and inequity are threats there is a greater willingness to learn. But we still rely on moral assertion to stimulate and inform what we learn. 

We are always playing catch up with change. Our environment changes and then we react to adapt. If we misinterpret the nature of the change and misunderstand the response we should employ, we will fail to reach our goals. 

I think we also have a need to be thought of as ‘good’. But this depends on whose opinion we value – who is ‘one of us’. This might be our family, our friendship network, team members, fellow employees or members of our community. The larger that group the more idealistic and inclusive we are. 

As observed above, on the whole, our communities reflect an abundance of goodwill, which means we are increasingly more inclusive decade by decade. We respond positively to advocacy for positive change.

DEI and Disability advocates play a role in signaling that change is desired. But what they are not good at is persuading the hold outs – especially those who are in positions of influence and power. This matters because people in such positions are less likely to be empathic, compassionate and inclusive. There’s good research (in cognitive science and neuroscience) on this theme which I urge the reader to discover and explore. A Psychology Today article might be a useful starting point. I found that and other sources when I searched ‘power and the loss of empathy’.

So, precisely when insight into how to persuade those in power to be more empathic the DEI and Disability advocates run out of ideas, insight and capability to stimulate positive change.

Conclusion

On a personal level I now see DEI as a high-level set of values based on a theory rather than a basis for practice. It needs a rethink and thorough overhaul.

I take Bohnet’s and Chilazi’s point that with DEI there’s now a political dimension that is contestable and political. It didn’t need to be there and it distorts and stains what should be an unquestionably worthy objective. They argue that fairness is a better, more universal, value. I agree. 

It may be that arguing that everybody gets an equal chance will trigger some deeply entrenched biases but that’s an easier thing to deal with than asserting people of a ‘protected’ class deserve particular attention. Inclusivity must include everyone, rather than groups of identified people we see as a ‘protected’ class of persons. 

If we focus on individual attributes, we increase the risk of undesired focus of attention when people just want to be ‘one of us’. We discriminate for, rather than against. It’s as if we think this counters the adverse response. But what we often do is just paint a nicer target on people’s backs.

I am aware that the politics of identity is now embracing disability. I have no desire to engage with the arguments about it. They don’t concern me, so I have no useful opinion to express. I remain focused on disability being about what I and others can’t do in settings where we are entitled to equity of opportunity and dignity. What accommodations and adjustments are necessary to enable that equity? How then can we make those accommodations and adjustments happen? 

Here there are two considerations – the attitudinal and the functional. There isn’t yet universal agreement that this equity is to be actively and willingly brought to fruition. The means – priorities, permissions, processes, plans and funds – must also be realised, often against pragmatic or ideological opposition. 

The method to achieve functional equity is persuasion. The moral argument has been put and won. We have legislation and policy in place. Now we need action to evolve what is into what is desired. Persuasion in this context is ethical and sophisticated. It is a form of leadership. It requires self-awareness, insight and empathy. It requires knowledge and skill. Ideally it is a form of praxis sustained by action learning practices. 

It is hard work that can’t be knocked over in one-off training seminars or on-line courses. It’s more complex than self-styled disability advocates and DEI trainers can imagine or bother with. Doyle is right about one thing in particular. The performers get paid for their slick deliveries while the people who are doing the hard work at ERG levels are often expected to donate their time. 

Introduction

The human mediated environment modifies the natural world to our advantage – but not for all. We make roads, footpaths and ramps over which people with impaired mobility can travel more freely, but this isn’t universal across our public spaces. The Social Model of Disability originally argued for a more inclusive design for people with impaired physical mobility. But making our shared public spaces more accessible should be about more than just mobility disabilities.

A few weeks ago, I watched a webinar on The Social Model of Disability – 40 years on. Speakers agreed that we needed to move on from it, but there wasn’t a satisfying exploration of where we might go. The webinar is worth watching because it does demonstrate where the conversation is up to at an academic level. I also watched a few videos featuring Tom Shakespeare. Tom is a Professor of Disability Research at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and was a useful thinker for me because he is refreshingly clear.

Below I reflect this on conversation and the videos. I have previously expressed my discontent with the Social Model and argued a case for where to go next.

Re-thinking the Social Model

Current Social Model proponents induce some to believe that the Medical Model of Disability isn’t valid or useful. This is nonsense. It’s just not absolute. I am ‘disabled’ because of a physical condition. My ankles don’t work well enough to allow me to walk independently. That’s true in any situation or context. It’s got nothing to do with society. I can walk with aids – Canadian crutches mostly. But then the physical environment must be conducive. The natural world isn’t a place I can go walking – unless there are human made paths that cater to my needs. And human-made environs must also be conducive. So insisting that disability is determined by social factors is a very urban perspective.

The normal human made physical environment has been designed to cater to the needs of able-bodied people. This means that those who are not able-bodied are frequently unable to access human made structures (streets and paths, parks, buildings and so on). This is what the Social Model set out to address. It has succeeded in many ways. This has made it possible for people with disabilities who were previously unable to move around freely in public to participate in public life and to be seen – and be known about to a far better degree. But it’s still not a universal reality for those living even in major urban settings.

For multiple reasons the Social Model is now clunky. It is still relevant but in need of a rethink. Among those reasons are:

1. New technologies that change the scope of accessibility and inclusion – on the physical, sensory and communal levels. 
2. New definitions of disability. 
3. New expectations about rights and dignities. 
4. New expectations about attitudes and behaviors

I don’t think we need to have a ‘model’ of disability at all. At the time the Social Model was developed the concept of a ‘model’ probably made sense, but now it does not. Now we have a swarm of theories and political passions that can end up engaged in pointless argument as they try to define disability according to their particular lights.

Disability is complex and highly individualistic. I want to suggest that we think of disability in terms of an ecology rather than a model. But let me be clear here. I mean this in terms of thinking about disability in the abstract only. Not in terms of thinking about people with disability – who belong within our communities as included members.

The term disability community is better used to denote a ‘community of interest’ rather than an actual community of people who get together for whatever purpose. This terminology risks being separative while it is intended to be the opposite. This is what happens when we fail to distinguish between abstract and concrete notions. 

Personally, I detest the term. I don’t identify as being a member of a community defined by disability. Yes, I have friends who have disabilities, but that’s not why they are my friends. We do share our disability-related experiences because, as friends, we share our experiences. Disability is a significant part of my identity – but on a superficial level only. It makes me stand out because I get about with Canadian crutches and I am limited in where I can go and what I can do. But, aside from that (as Tom Shakespeare observes) life is good. I live with my disabilities; I don’t dwell on them. I think about disability a lot because it’s been the theme of my professional life for decades. Long before I acquired disabilities of my own.

Disability is profoundly context dependent, and most people encounter disability only within specific contexts. However, when we talk about Disability Inclusion or Disability Policy we get into far more abstract realms that we feel must be made more manageable by thinking in terms of models. This is where we have gotten ourselves into bother. We can put water from a river into vessels, but we cannot contain the river itself.

By focusing our attention on disability, we have fooled ourselves into thinking it is the only primary problem. It isn’t. 

Advocates of the Social Model say that, in effect, medical impairments are not disabling, our attitude toward them is. This is bullshit. A person in a wheelchair has a better life when the physical environment isn’t full of impediments to them getting around in their wheelchair. But whatever puts them in their wheelchair is still real and still impacts their life in private. Wheelchair users don’t talk openly about their disability, probably because we have so many wheelchair heroes who are seen as disability advocates. They have an image to keep up. Besides, nobody wants to be thought of as a whiner. My brother uses a wheelchair and we talk often about our take on living with a mobility disability and what an utter pain in the arse it is.

We can quibble over the language we use. Not all impairments lead to disabilities in all contexts. Not all disabilities are the result of a physical human-made environment. The social environment is disabling in the same way the absence of a hearing loop is disabling to a person hard of hearing. It reduces potential for access and inclusion unfairly.

The Social Model has a focus on physical disability – especially mobility related. But when we widen our perspective to encompass the full spectrum of disability the Social Model becomes a blunt unwieldy instrument. How do we accommodate cognitive and behavioural disabilities which don’t necessarily require modification of our shared spaces – but of the attitudes and behaviors of those who use those shared spaces? What require modification are the beliefs, attitudes and behaviors of community members. This raises some complex concerns. 

1. Organizations can require certain behaviors of members – a code of conduct of some sort. But they cannot compel beliefs or attitudes. 
2. Communities are likewise constrained but to a lesser degree. Communities are able to impose sanctions on individuals few organizations would dare.
3. Neither organizations nor communities strongly police behavioural standards. This is a practical reality. Not even authoritarian cultures are successful in this. 

Without enforcement as a primary instrument, we are left with persuasion. Here we have three options:

1. The moral argument 
2. The communal responsibility argument. 
3. Evolving our culture to be more compassionate and inclusive.

Each has its drawbacks if employed as a primary or singular approach. One again, simple models do not work well.

The tyranny of able normality

Accusations of ableism point to a presumption that most ‘normal’ people don’t have disabilities, and this constitutes an overwhelming portion of our community – which has the power to make decisions. This is true to a point because people who are able to work, and be in positions of power and influence aren’t necessarily aware of people with disabilities -who were mostly invisible to the general gaze. 

The able and normal looked after themselves because that’s who they saw. But when we consider disability through a wide-angle lens what is normal takes on a different meaning. Impairments caused by accident, injury, illness or since birth or by reason of advanced age aren’t necessarily disabilities in a universal sense but may be so in one or several contexts only. Either people with such impairments are not often encountered or, unless an impairment is visible, it is rarely spoken of. And when it comes to older persons experiencing impairments because of advanced age, they mostly don’t see themselves as having a disability. 

This can be specific government policy too. In Australia eligibility for the National Disability Insurance Scheme cuts off at age 65. At that age one is entitled only to the relatively poorly funded aged care system – even if the disability is not age-related.

Not all impairments become disabilities in contexts where they attract public awareness or require public accommodations or adjustments. What goes on in private isn’t reported. We miss a huge portion of the reality of living with a disability in consequence.

We have efforts at estimating the level of disability in a community but how reliable are they? It is estimated that 18% of the Australian population had a disability in 2018. This is from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare so the data will reflect a strong methodology. But does that reflect reality or the constraints of a formal methodology?

How we deal with disability

So much depends on the size of a community – and hence the degree of connection with individuals. Families, tribes, villages, towns have different types of bonds compared with large cities. 

What might be a personal sense of responsibility in one setting isn’t in another. If we belong to a large community in which anonymity is the norm our response to people with disability may be different simply because no sense of personal responsibility is triggered. 

In communities or in organizations we cannot assume that non-responsiveness to disability is because the person doesn’t care. It could be that they already have care responsibilities and their capacity to do more is limited.

Not only is disability complex but so is normality and so is community. We are complicated beings who can’t be understood in simple ways – like models. 

What is the problem?

When it comes to disability my focus is on problem solving. On a personal level it’s – “How do I achieve what I want to achieve?” When I was involved in service provision it was about the person with disability and their need to have a safe, dignified and fulfilled life – and how the organization and its people were going to do that. As a disability ERG lead it was about working with my employer to address the access, equity and inclusion issues of staff with disability. 

The very theme of dis-ability is about not being able to do stuff – not having the ability to meet a need or satisfy a want or need. For an employee with a disability legislation and policy impose upon an employer a duty to assure access, equity and inclusion. But ensuring that duty is fulfilled in a compassionate or  sensitive manner isn’t something that happens.

Disability has other dimensions. It can be the cause of pain, psychological distress, make relationships (social and intimate) difficult or impossible. It exists in these dimensions because there is a need unmet through inability caused by an organic condition that is not ‘normal’. Disability can manifest on a spectrum that progresses from mild and highly context specific to profound and global. How we respond as a community is important. But is this a social responsibility or something deeper?

The personal perspective

My recent foray into thinking on disability left me feeling as if academics and political activists have taken over and the business of addressing personal needs is being largely ignored. The situation is exacerbated by the dominant role of government bureaucracies in framing policies, strategies and doling out funds. 

How do academic or political theories about disability help individuals in need of concrete solutions to real problems about access, equity and support? They don’t. 

In the past 6 months the ‘disability advocates’ that I have encountered have mostly been privileged in some way. They are employed. They have visible disabilities which are often their trademarks – confirming they have a disability – but their insight into disability as a lived experience of disadvantage and exclusion is either limited or non-existent. Some are brashly political as if their performance is going to persuade others to change and become more compassionate and inclusive. It won’t. 

Disability is changing as a thing in our communities for good and ill. There are good things happening in some areas and there are unresolved concerns that are harder to address in other areas because decision-makers are remote from the realities of lived experiences that have real existential edges to them – where people are actually suffering. 

So, we can theorize about disability or we can act to address suffering. But here’s the problem. It is not only people with disability who may be suffering. 

The Social Model holds that people are disabled by their society and that the resolution to this question is for society to create more inclusive environments. That’s sensible enough – to a point – dealing with physical, technological, policy, procedural and systemic issues. These can be discretely disability focused in ways that do not exclude others and may even help them. 

But beyond that changes in beliefs, attitudes and behaviors that blend inclusivity into a culture cannot be disability focused. Empathy and compassion can’t be quarantined to disability alone. We cannot make a culture more inclusive of people with disability without making inclusivity a universal goal. It is true that some elements of our community think otherwise. But they are not representative. This doesn’t mean that you can’t be inclusive of people with disability unless you include everyone. That’s not true at a personal level. You can. But it’s not how things work in a complex, diverse and pluralist culture. 

The Medical Model and the Social Model have roles to fill still – as elements of an overall response. Both models relate to a privileged state where such solutions are accessible. But in many parts of the world all there is is community and culture – and some external aid. I have written before about YPK in Bali. They are selling t-shirts and seeking donations to raise funds to buy a mini bus. It has been remarkable how few people in places privileged enough to think in terms of Medical and Social models have been persuaded to contribute to that cause.

Conclusion

How we think about disability is evolving. It is becoming part of our social discourse on identity in ways that weren’t apparent 15 years got when I got seriously into Disability Inclusion. I retain my focus on disability as a problem to be solved to address access, inclusion and equity concerns for employees and community members.

It’s not that I mean to dismiss or diminish the social discourse on identity, it’s just that it’s not an aspect that triggers my passion. It’s hard to do problem-solving well. So, it needs focused attention. This is especially so if, as I argue, we need to move to a post-model way of understanding disability and see it as a complex context-sensitive ecological way. Yes, this is a Social Ecology perspective. It embraces culture and community and the difficult business of inspiring people to disability as free agents who are not browbeaten by clumsy moral arguments. 

It is not a linear model-based approach, but one which doesn’t try to craft hard definitions, set thinking rules, or make moral demands as if there is only one acceptable standard. In the complexity of disability there are some who need our help to participate in our shared lives to the best extent we can enable. It comes down to caring for others as an individual through whatever motivating means we elect.

Here’s an excerpt from the webinar – from Prof Scott Avery:

“Out in western New South Wales in Lake Mungo there’s an archaeological site and it’s got all these footprints in the clay. And amongst those footprints is a single right line of footprints, so it goes right footprint, right footprint, right footprint, no corresponding left footprint….. We tell this story of inclusion… the Mungo man story, the one-legged Mungo man, to say everyone has a place and purpose.” 

Inclusion is an ancient impulse.