Casual Day 2022

Despite policies on inclusive education, employing people with disabilities and anti-discrimination, not much has improved.

I celebrate the people with disabilities who, both formally and informally, promote disability equality, who patiently have the same conversations over and over again with politician after politician, with employer after employer. Look around and notice who is there and who is not, who the space welcomes and who it does not, and ask yourself why. For many who support Casual Day, disability will remain a distant thing, largely out of sight on the fringes of society, and inclusion will remain viewed as someone else’s responsibility. Disability inclusion is often viewed, not as a right, but as dependent upon the internal strength and determination of individual people with disabilities. Those who work in the disability rights arena often feel as though we are having the same conversations that we were having two decades ago – and we are. I internalised a similar message as a young person experiencing progressive sight loss – that the world was not going to welcome me and that it was my responsibility to fit in.