Everything I have unlearned since acquiring a disability in my 20s
By Briar Harte
This International Day of People with Disabilities (IPDWD), we can all benefit from some unlearning, writes disability inclusion changemaker Briar Harte.
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Today is International Day of People with Disabilities (IPDWD), and I want to talk to you about disability. Not the NDIS, and not disability as a tragedy - but disability as a common human experience.
I was the same age as Hannah (27)when I acquired a disability. Medically, I’d lost the use and feeling of my right leg - and acquired a limp. In reality, it rippled outwards, into every aspect of my life.
Thirteen years on, I’ve learnt to walk again, started a family and built a career. Today, I am an award-winning disability changemaker, helping organisations transform the experiences of disabled customers and employees and sharing what I learn along the way through my newsletter, Mostly Unlearning.
And that’s what I want to talk about in this piece: the habit of inclusion is underpinned by learning and unlearning - mostly unlearning.
Today, on International Day of People with Disabilities 2025, I want to share some of the things I’ve unlearned about disability — and I invite you to unlearn with me.
Unlearning One: Becoming disabled changes your life, but not in the ways people assume.
Acquiring a disability in my twenties interrupted my life in a way I could not ignore.
The financial impact was immediate and ongoing. My insurance was inadequate; in the end, it cost me a house deposit’s worth of medical bills and lost income. I had no access to Centrelink, and suddenly, I was paying a ‘disability tax’, similar to the cost bump for a wedding. I went back to work.
No one expects you to have good work or a career when you’re disabled. Do you know just how statistically unlikely it is to have a job as a disabled person, let alone a good job or a career?
The employment rate for people with a disability is 32 percentage points lower (48 per cent versus 80 per cent for not-yet-disabled). The gap has remained stubborn for over 30 years, briefly shifting during COVID, when work-from-home measures supported disability employment.
Most of us will acquire a disability in our working lives, and many never return to work.
One in 10 people retire early due to illness, injury, or disability, which has a dramatic impact on retirement finances. It can be legal, in Australia, to pay people with a disability less than $3 an hour.
Then there is the violence, micro-aggressions and soft bigotry of low expectations. It didn’t take long to learn first-hand how women with disabilities experience violence at twice the rate of women without disability.
Micro-aggressions and soft bigotry of low expectations persist; I’ve just got better at shutting them down. Disability is the last workplace taboo.
Unlearning Two: Disability is not a bad word. It’s a part of life.
In 1980, the World Health Organisation (WHO) considered disability to be a personal attribute and an impairment. Today, the WHO considers disability to be context-dependent:
“Disability is not just a health problem. It is a complex phenomenon, reflecting the interaction between features of a person’s body and features of the society in which he or she lives”.
Someone confined to a wheelchair becomes a wheelchair user.
De-centering a condition or person also shifts disability outwards - from individual blame to collective action. This shift is called the Social Model of Disability. With this shift, responsibility moves from the disabled person to society.
A wheelchair enables. Stairs disable. So we bring in curb cuts and ramps.
Disability inclusion benefits everyone. Often called the curb-cut effect, improvements for people with disabilities benefit many other groups. Those curb cuts and ramps also help people with injuries or mobility impairments, parents with prams, and travellers with suitcases.
It’s not the wheelchair user who chooses to build curb cuts and ramps; it’s a collection of decisions made elsewhere - in PowerPoint presentations, funding requests and Steering Committees - by my clients and colleagues, with and without lived experience.
Unlearning Three: Disability is more common than you think.
Disability is the largest minority on earth that anyone can join, at any time and for many reasons. We are 5.5 million people here in Australia, and 1.3 billion people globally.
According to the ABS, Disability, Ageing and Carers, we are talking about:
21 per cent of people in Australia
6 per cent of preschool-aged children
15 per cent of working-age adults
More than 50 per cent of people over 65
12 per cent of people in Australia are carers of someone with a disability in their home
Disability prevalence is growing. From 2018 to 2022, the percentage of people with a disability in Australia rose from 18 per cent in 2018 to 21 per cent in 2022 - largely attributed to increased awareness and decreasing stigma associated with having a disability. This is the social model of disability in action.
Everyone knows someone who is disabled. Disability isn’t a niche. It isn’t uncommon. It certainly isn’t “those people over there”. It’s our colleagues, our kids’ teacher or the person who served you coffee this morning. It’s also your customers, your audience, your constituents or your patients. It’s those executives reading PowerPoint presentations, approving funding requests and sitting in Steering Committee meetings. It’s some CEO’s and, at least statistically, a lot of board members.
Disability is as certain as death and taxes. Permanent, temporary or situational; disability is a part of our lives. It might be happening to people around you, or to you. The good news is, you don’t have to have a disability to be disability inclusive.
Unlearning Four: It’s easy to be disability inclusive.
It can feel like we are in a cultural moment where being publicly disabled — or publicly inclusive — is somehow contentious or not allowed. But we rarely need permission to be inclusive. We can each make more accessible, inclusive choices - in our lives and at work.
The habit of inclusion is underpinned by learning and unlearning -mostly unlearning. I started with the simple habit of adding disabled voices to my social media. Today, I amplify the voices of disabled leaders and creators. So thank you for unlearning together, on International Day of People with Disabilities.
About the author
Briar Harte (she/her)
Briar is a high-energy, high-impact disability inclusion changemaker. Years after acquiring her disability, a difficult pregnancy prompted Briar to start sharing her lived experience. Today, Briar is an award-winning disability changemaker, working inside and alongside organisations to transform the experiences of disabled customers. She writes a weekly(ish) newsletter, Mostly Unlearning, which you can subscribe to on Substack.
You can find out more about Briar's work via her website, and you can find more of her content on LinkedIn, Instagram (@briarloves), and TikTok (@briar.loves).
Your breakdown of structural barriers, internalized ableism, employment inequity, and the social model of disability is incredibly important. So many people still view disability as an individual flaw rather than the predictable intersection of health, context, design, and culture.
Your experience, and the research you provide, bring a lot of important ideas to consider. Thank you for sharing!