The proposal is a panel conversation among four experienced leaders with disability who are leading change in diverse fields. This session would differ from the roundtable  format the conference organisers are proposing as we would aim to give as much time as possible to these leaders as our community has much to learn from them. Some time for Q and A from conference participants would be included in the session.
This session would need to be scheduled in the morning to allow Bryan to participate from California.

Plain Language Abstract
This presentation is by four leaders with disability.  We will talk about ourselves.

We will answer questions from the audience.

 

Llewellyn Prain  - facilitator 

Llewellyn is a company director and public speaker. She currently serves on the boards of genU, the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital and she is Deputy Chair of Greater Western Water. She is the founder of WaterAble  - a network for people with disability and their allies  in the Victorian water industry. In 2021 Llewellyn received a Victorian Disability Award in the emerging leader category.

Bryan Bashin 

Bryan is the CEO of the Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually impaired in San Francisco. Bryan was previously Executive Editor for the Center for Science and Reporting, Assistant Regional Commissioner for the United States Department of Education: Rehabilitation Services, and Executive Director of Society for the Blind in Sacramento. He serves or has served on numerous committees and organizations, including California Blind Advisory Committee, VisionServe Alliance, San Francisco State University’s Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability, and the World Blind Union. 

 

Dinesh Palipana OAM  

Dinesh was the 2021 Queensland Australian of the Year. He  is an Australian doctor, lawyer, scientist and disability advocate. He is the second person with quadriplegia to graduate as a doctor in Australia and the first with spinal cord injury.

 

Colleen Furlanetto  OAM

Colleen  is a former practice nurse, councillor, mayor and  Disability Commissioner at Commercial Passenger Vehicles Victoria. She is currently a board director    at 
Ambulance Victoria and is a Business and Community Board member of Regional Development Victoria Goulburn Regional Partnership. Colleen is also a Country Fire Authority (CFA) volunteer leader. 

A truly inclusive society for people with disability requires a national-level shift in how Australians view disability. The way we present information affects what people think, feel, and do. Making better, evidence-informed choices in how we present information, can shift mindsets and motivate changes that more fully include people with disabilities.  There is strong evidence that we can change attitudes and behaviours at a local level through individual contact. This project takes those approaches to scale through ‘reframing’ how we present information about disability.

In phase one, researchers reviewed literature and worked with experts to identify what we want the public to understand about disability, then we mapped the gap with what they actually think.  

Phase two builds the evidence base about what works at the population level to change how people think about disability by creating ‘frames’ (ways of communicating about the issue) which are tested for their effectiveness in shifting mindsets and increasing support for actions and reforms. 

Phase three involves implementing the evidence and creating change at scale through strategic partnerships with groups such as major disability services, local governments and large corporations. These initiatives are supported through structured engagement across media platforms resulting in new ways of communicating about disability within the Australian community. 

Plain Language Abstract
Everybody in Australia has ideas about disability.  Some people have good attitudes about people with disability.  Some people have poor attitudes.  We want Australia to be inclusive for people with disability.  We will be talking about making Australia more inclusive.

There are three steps in our research:

People with intellectual disability involved in criminal justice systems have little opportunity to influence policy and practice frameworks that affect them. Often people with intellectual disability are not consulted about the systems and services they are subject to, and especially when interacting with the criminal justice system they are often denied the opportunity to determine which supports they will have, and how they will interact with them.

Self-advocacy and lived experience consultation work is yet to be well explored in Victoria with people with intellectual disability involved with the criminal justice system. Due to the limited work that has previously occurred in this area, there are limited frameworks for effectively doing this work.

VALID's Justice For All project was a participatory research project that focused on the experiences of people with intellectual disability involved in criminal justice systems in Australia. A group of 16 people with lived experience co-designed the project. The group who worked on the Justice For All project created a virtual reality documentary called [They Will Use] My First Name. This 17 minute documentary focusses on the experiences of people with intellectual disability when they are arrested, go to court, and when they go to prison. Some of the lived experience experts involved in the Justice For All project said that their involvement in the project gave them an important platform to speak out about the trauma they have experienced when they have been subject to criminal justice processes. Others said that participating in the project taught them about their rights and gave them confidence to speak out about times when their rights have been denied.

This presentation provides an overview of how a lived experience practice framework could look for people with intellectual disability involved in the criminal justice system, and how self-advocacy and lived experience work provides opportunities not only for self-determination and access to disability rights, but also a means of healing trauma and creating meaningful recommendations for policy reform.

Plain Language Abstract
I am going to talk about a project that I did with VALID.  The project was called Justice For All.

How people speak can affect the expectations others have of them, and how people are received by others can affect the self-identity and expectations people can have of themselves.  We wanted to know how disabled speakers experienced life in a world dominated by ableist norms and expectations.  Developing our understanding of these issues might suggest ways of raising the expectations people have of disabled speakers and the expectations disabled speakers have of themselves.

We invited people with a life-long experience of being a disabled speaker to respond to an on-line survey.  The survey results were used to develop an interview.  We then interviewed people who self-identified as being a disabled speaker.

Disabled speakers experience stigma and discrimination.  Their experience of an ableist world effects their self-identity, and they can internalise the low expectations of an ableist world.

Policy and practice needs to challenge ableist norms and expectations.  We need to build a community accepting of diversity in communication, and which values and includes disabled speakers.   

Plain Language Abstract
There are many ways that people can speak.  People sometimes make judgements about people because of how they speak.  This can then affect how people see themselves.  Some people with disability have impaired speech; their speech my sound slurred or jumpy.  We will call them disabled speakers.  Some people might look down on people with impaired speech.