Attorney-General Dept. Robert Garran Offices 3-5 National Circuit BARTON ACT 2600

14th November 2025

RE: Submission to the Review of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth)

For the attention of Review Secreteriat, Attorney-General Dept.,

Alchemical Minds welcomes the opportunity to contribute to the Review of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth) (“the Act”). We are an emerging advocacy and education initiative promoting systemic inclusion for people with disability and sensory difference, informed by lived experience, psychological research, and professional practice.

Alchemical Minds was established to advance inclusion and equity through advocacy, education, and organisational consulting. The initiative is grounded in both professional expertise and lived experience. Its founder, Emily Eden, has lived experience of disability across the Commonwealth and more than 20 years of corporate experience before transitioning into the mental-health field. Through this background, she witnessed firsthand the unbalanced burden placed on individuals to self-disclose and self-advocate for reasonable adjustments.

Under the current Act, individuals are often required to initiate disclosure and request adjustments, yet the interpretation of “reasonable adjustments” varies greatly between employers and is frequently influenced by management attitudes and organisational culture. This inconsistency, coupled with the emotional labour of repeated self-advocacy, is exhausting and detrimental to wellbeing.

The existing Act lacks mechanisms to redress this imbalance. To be genuinely protective, the Act must not rely on people with disability to carry the procedural and emotional load of ensuring their own inclusion. Instead, it should establish shared responsibility across workplaces, educational institutions, and service settings, supported by independent advocates who can assist with adjustment processes, implementation, and the development of self-advocacy capacity. A modernised Act should therefore protect the population it was designed to serve before imbalance occurs, not after harm has been experienced.

This submission calls for a modernised Act that:

Updates the Act and its definition of disability and discrimination, recognising barrier-affected people whose accessibility needs diverge from societal design norms.
Introduces an enforced positive duty of inclusion requiring all duty-holders (employers, educators, service providers, and government agencies) to take proactive steps to prevent discrimination.
Integrates independent advocacy support so that advocates can act as intermediaries between individuals and duty-holders, facilitating communication and adjustment processes.

Alchemical Minds stands ready to assist the Attorney-General’s Department in future consultation and implementation processes.

Kind regards,

Emily Eden.

Submission to the Review of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth)

Alchemical Minds 14th November 2025

COLLABORATION AND INCLUSION

www.alchemicalminds.com.au

ABN: 869 498 343 67

Executive Summary

The Review of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (‘the Act’) presents an historic opportunity to align Australian law with contemporary human rights standards and lived experience. Alchemical Minds supports the Review’s intent to simplify and modernise the Act, shifting responsibility from individuals to institutions through a legislated positive duty of inclusion. This submission provides analysis and recommendations across key reform areas.

Alchemical Minds was established to advance inclusion and equity through advocacy, education, and organisational consulting. The initiative is grounded in both professional knowledge and lived experience. Its founder, Emily Eden, has firsthand experience of disability in both the UK and Australia, and more than twenty years’ experience in corporate environments before transitioning into the mental-health field. Through this experience, Emily observed the disproportionate burden placed on individuals to self-disclose, self-advocate, and navigate inconsistent interpretations of “reasonable adjustments” across organisations.

Under the current legislative framework, individuals protected by the Act are required to initiate disclosure and request adjustments. The interpretation of what constitutes “reasonable” remains highly variable, often influenced by management attitudes, resource constraints, and organisational culture. This inconsistency, coupled with the emotional labour of repeated self-advocacy, creates an ongoing psychological and administrative burden that undermines wellbeing and participation.

A modernised Act, reframed as an Access and Inclusion Act, should address the design-level causes of exclusion rather than place a marginalising focus on the individual. It should embed a positive duty on all duty-holders (employers, educators, service providers, and government agencies) to proactively ensure accessibility, inclusion, and equity. Independent advocacy support must also be integrated into these processes to share the emotional labour of disclosure and adjustment, ensuring fairer, more consistent, and psychologically safe implementation. A truly contemporary legislative framework should protect people before imbalance and exclusion occur, not only after harm has been experienced.

Emily Eden, Founder – Alchemical Minds.

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Position of Alchemical Minds

While the Act has provided a foundation for legal protection, its practical application places excessive procedural and emotional labour on individuals. People with disability are often required to self-disclose, identify their own needs, and repeatedly request adjustments across workplaces, education, and service systems. This process exposes individuals to variable interpretations of “reasonable adjustments” and inconsistent employer or institutional responses. It also creates significant emotional burden, eroding wellbeing and participation. To restore balance, the Act must evolve from a reactive complaints’ framework to a proactive accountability framework that shares responsibility among all parties.

Alchemical Minds therefore recommends:

1. Updating the Act and its definition of disability and discrimination Individuals protected under the Act would be recognised as barrier-affected people, falling within a broader divergent umbrella: those whose accessibility needs diverge from societal design norms. This includes people with neural, mobility, sensory, or communication functioning that may be restricted by environmental, attitudinal, or systemic barriers. Current legislative language reinforces marginalisation by focusing on individual deficit rather than addressing the design flaws in accessibility and inclusion embedded in societal systems. The revised framing would re-centre the purpose of the Act: to prevent discrimination and protect the rights of people whose accessibility needs diverge from prevailing societal design norms.
1. An enforced positive duty of inclusion requiring all duty-holders: employers, educators, service providers, and government agencies, to take proactive steps to prevent discrimination. This includes periodic reporting on accessibility and inclusion measures taken within the institute or organisation.
1. Integration of independent advocacy support so that advocates can act as intermediaries between individuals and duty-holders, facilitating communication and adjustment processes. The insertion of advocacy support also serves to recognise and share the inherent emotional labour embedded in the Act to disclose, self-advocate for accessibility and inclusion, and report discrimination.

By adopting these reforms, the Act can move toward a model that shares the burden of inclusion, transforming advocacy from an act of endurance into a systemic practice of accountability and care. These recommendations are further detailed in the remainder of this report.

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1. Updating the Act and its Definitions of Disability and Discrimination

Alchemical Minds supports the proposed modernisation of the definition of disability to bring it in line with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). We advocate for a definition that removes the focus from perceived lack and instead recognises people whose neural, mobility, sensory, or communication functioning falls outside current societal design norms. These individuals face systemic barriers when accessibility frameworks assume neurotypical or able-bodied baselines.

Alchemical Minds affirms the CRPD’s recognition that disability is fundamentally a people-first, social, and human rights issue: that it is societal structures, attitudes, and environments that are disabling, rather than the traits of individuals.

Accordingly, we propose the following key adjustments:

Rename the Act to better reflect its purpose, for example: Access and Inclusion Act.
Redefine those protected under the Act as People whose neural, mobility, sensory, or communication accessibility needs diverge from societal design norms, and who experience environmental barriers that restrict equal participation in social, educational, or economic life.
Acknowledge that the types of barriers include physical, attitudinal, communicative, and systemic that reflect the ways society has not yet been designed for the full diversity of human functioning.

Alchemical Minds acknowledges the linguistic challenges in redefining disabled or disability. We suggest that these can be addressed by depersonalising the focus of the Act to emphasise its true intent: to prevent discrimination and protect the rights of people whose accessibility needs diverge from societal norms.

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2. An Enforced Positive Duty of Inclusion

Currently, the Act requires individuals to self-disclose disability and request “reasonable adjustments.” In the absence of a clear statutory definition, the interpretation of what constitutes a reasonable adjustment is often subjective and inconsistent, varying across organisations and sectors. Alchemical Minds has observed that this imbalance in workplace equity frequently depends on the discretion and attitudes of individual managers, rather than on transparent or evidence-based standards.

Alchemical Minds therefore strongly supports redefining “adjustments” within the Act and placing the onus on organisations to demonstrate unjustifiable hardship, rather than requiring individuals to justify their need for inclusion. This realignment would ensure greater consistency, fairness, and accountability in the application of accessibility measures.

Alchemical Minds also welcomes the introduction of a positive duty of inclusion, modelled on the 2022 reforms to the Sex Discrimination Act. Embedding such a duty would help prevent the disproportionate burden currently placed on people protected by the Act to self-disclose and self-advocate for their own adjustments, and would promote inclusion, accessibility, and overall wellbeing as shared organisational responsibilities rather than individual struggles.

Summary of Proposed Reform

A new statutory duty requiring organisations, employers, and education providers to actively prevent discrimination. This is essential to shift the burden of compliance from individuals to institutions and organisations. It should include enforceable standards and reporting requirements, with oversight by the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) or a similar, appropriate organisation, and clear guidance for organisations. Reporting can be managed through a dedicated portal that is managed by the nominated appropriate organisation.

Recommendations:

Establish a legislated positive duty modelled on the Sex Discrimination Act’s 2022 reforms.
Fund disability advocacy organisations such as Disability Advocacy Resource Unit (DARU) to deliver training and accreditation.
Require periodic (e.g., biannual) reporting on preventive measures, including the following:
- Adjustments made and systemic barriers identified.

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Governance and Accountability

Training undertaken by managers and staff, and engagement of advocacy services.
Progress against disability action plans and accessibility audits. Reports should be submitted through a public central portal administered by the nominated organisation to promote transparency and sector benchmarking.

Accessible, centralised reporting and complaint mechanism integrated into the nominated portal to:
- Enable confidential or anonymous submissions.
- Permit advocates to lodge on behalf of individuals.
- Aggregate data to identify systemic trends.

Alchemical Minds acknowledges the challenge of enforcing such requirements (e.g. for private organisations). Therefore, it is proposed this is achieved through the following:

Mandatory requirements for Government organisations, and organisations receiving Government funding (e.g., not for profit).
Mechanisms to achieve accreditation through certification bodies with benefits such as endorsement by Disability organisations and certification (e.g., ISO certification).

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3. Integration of Independent Advocacy Support

Current legislative frameworks, including the Act, place responsibility for disclosure and adjustment requests squarely on individuals the Act is intended to protect. This dynamic is problematic because it places a disproportionate burden on the very people the Act is designed to protect, requiring them to disclose, request adjustments, and self-advocate for inclusion. Peer-reviewed psychological research consistently shows that this burden places people with accessibility needs under significant psychological stress, with adverse impacts on overall wellbeing.

For example, for those with hearing-specific sensory accessibility needs, research across neuropsychology and occupational health demonstrates that hearing- impaired workers expend substantially greater cognitive effort to interpret speech and navigate noisy environments. This constant vigilance, known as listening- related fatigue, compounds over time, reducing concentration, social engagement, and psychological wellbeing. The structural failure to design workplaces for auditory diversity amplifies these effects and exempliﬁes the broader pattern of exclusion experienced across other access domains, transforming everyday communication into a chronic stressor. In such circumstances, self-advocacy becomes not only procedural but cognitively and emotionally exhausting. (Alchemical Minds can provide a review of this evidence upon request.)

The Minority Stress Model, developed by Ilian H. Meyer in 2003, provides a useful lens for understanding this burden. It demonstrates that individuals who belong to marginalised groups experience chronic stress from both overt discrimination and subtler forms of exclusion, such as being left out of conversations. For those with accessibility needs, these experiences are compounded by the constant pressure to self-disclose, anticipate stigma, and manage others’ reactions. This cycle erodes wellbeing, generates psychosocial fatigue, and contributes to attrition from the workforce.

By removing the burden on individuals to manage their own accessibility and inclusion needs, the Act can instead promote a society in which people protected by the Act are supported to thrive. This principle is further illustrated by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (1943), which proposes that human motivation is structured through a progression from basic physiological and safety needs to higher-order needs of belonging, self-esteem, and self-actualisation. When people must continually fight for access to safety and stability, through repeated self-advocacy or fear of exclusion, they are denied the opportunity to focus on growth, belonging, and reaching their full potential.

www.alchemicalminds.com.au

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

creation, beauty, unity, aesthetics, exploration

dignity, respect, achievement, purpose, recognition

friendship, intimacy, community, sense of belonging

personal security, resources, source of income, structure, order

water, food, shelter, bare necessities for human survival

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (source: https://www.simplypsychology.org)

The Act must therefore move beyond protecting individuals after discrimination occurs and instead create mechanisms that prevent exclusion before it arises. This can be achieved by embedding independent advocacy support within workplaces, education providers, and public services. Advocates should not be optional intermediaries but formally recognised participants in the adjustment process.

These advocates would:

Facilitate communication between individuals and duty-holders, ensuring that adjustments are accurately understood and implemented.
Reduce the psychological and administrative load on employees or students required to repeatedly justify their needs.
Provide early intervention when barriers or misunderstandings emerge, preventing escalation into complaints.
Assist organisations in identifying systemic access gaps and fulfilling their positive duty obligations.

To ensure impartiality and accessibility, advocates should be funded and coordinated through mechanisms such as the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) or an equivalent national framework, rather than through the institutions responsible for implementing accessibility adjustments. This structure would ensure that advocacy remains rights-based and independent, rather than contingent on organisational goodwill.

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Accreditation and Standards

At present, there is no nationally recognised accreditation system for disability advocates. Existing advocacy roles vary widely in training, scope, and accountability, depending on state funding and program structure. Without a coherent framework, the quality and consistency of advocacy support are uneven.

Alchemical Minds recommends the establishment of a National Accreditation and Standards Framework for Disability Advocacy, advocacy peak bodies, and tertiary training providers. This framework should:

1. Define the core competencies required for accredited disability advocates, including trauma-informed practice, psychosocial literacy, and understanding of discrimination law.
1. Establish minimum training and professional supervision requirements.
1. Introduce a tiered registration model that aligns with existing professional codes (e.g., social work, counselling, community development).
1. Provide sustainable funding for advocacy organisations to recruit and train accredited staff.

Accreditation reform should be progressed in parallel with amendments to the Act, ensuring advocates are embedded in implementation as the Act transitions to a proactive, accountability-based model. Embedding a nationally accredited advocacy profession would professionalise the field, ensure consistency in service quality, and strengthen the Act’s capacity to deliver real, measurable inclusion.

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Conclusion

The Review of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 is a pivotal opportunity to transform Australia’s approach to accessibility and inclusion from one of reactive protection to proactive responsibility. By adopting modern definitions, embedding a legislated positive duty of inclusion, and integrating independent, accredited advocacy support, the Act can evolve into a true Access and Inclusion Act, one that addresses the design-level causes of exclusion rather than individual traits. Such reform would rebalance responsibility, ensuring that accessibility and inclusion are recognised as systemic obligations rather than personal burdens. It would recognise accessibility needs that diverge from societal design norms first, and provide the mechanisms, oversight, and professional advocacy structures needed to uphold their rights in practice.

Alchemical Minds urges the Attorney-General’s Department to enact reforms that deliver genuine accountability across government, education, and employment systems, transforming advocacy from an act of endurance into a national culture of equity, access, and care.