'Turn up your stereo, not your stereotypes' – celebrating International Day of People with Disability

On workplace adjustments:

Jen Ward, Community Legal Education Coordinator – ‘I've gone through workplace adjustment both here and at a previous employer about eight years ago and , when I went through it there, I was very grateful for it at the time. But it's just been , so different and better at VLA. At VLA, I've definitely felt more cared for both with being able to work from home because chronic fatigue is exhausting, but also , I have regular check-ins with my manager and my team leader, we regularly speak about it. It's not kind of like a ‘one and done’ thing, I found that really, really great.’

Boz Stephenson, Independent Mental Health Advocacy (IMHA) Advocate – ‘My experience with numerous organisations has always looked at … how it will impact the employer, not the employee and supporting them to do their job as best as they possibly can. And I understand there's challenges and things around costs and all sorts of things, but the time frame it generally takes also is pretty bad. The more supported I feel in my workplace, I feel more that I'm likely to share more about my disabilities and more about how they affect me and rather than feeling judged, I'm open to that support, which is also a good thing. So I think if we as a an organisation can make the time to do that with all the employees and I think if the question is more is how can I support you to do your job better and we're happy to do this for you, would be a much better way for people. And sort of destigmatizing the question and having that conversation and realising that like workplace adjustments can be as simple thing as a chair or a mouse or wireless keyboard.

On misconceptions and disability awareness:

Shannon Clifford, Executive Assistant and DEN co-chair – ‘A recent study suggests that a child with ADHD will receive over 20,000 negative comments about themselves by the age of 10, as opposed to a child without ADHD. And I guess there's only so many times that a child can be told that they're not good enough before they believe that they're not good enough and broken. People with ADHD often face exclusion and disciplinary actions, which then in turn causes a cycle, difficulty with gaining employment,, and triples the chances of addiction to drugs, such as Ice if people are not supported or have access to diagnoses, or access to medication if needed, which you know, it all kind of turns into this big cycle of one thing after the other after the other, which then often leads to the prison system. This is something that can be stopped very, very early on with education and understanding, and despite seeing so much education available out there, we’re really not getting anywhere.’

Boz – ‘I've been questioned about my capability and I've had comments like: Are you sure you can do that with your disability. It’s one of those things that just feeds into stereotypes for people and one of the reasons why I'm wearing the T-shirt I am today is because I made it myself and I made it so I could make people aware. So I have a saying that I use, I say, turn up your stereo, not your stereotypes, because that's what hurts people because we make judgments about people, we're not actually supporting them. We're just judging them.’