Disability Discrimination Act Review
Organisation Submission
October 2025
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ABOUT US
Deaf Connect is a national service provider and social impact organisation which is the product of four organisations coming together to deliver services and create social impact for the Australian Deaf community. Established in 1890 (South Australia), 1903 (Queensland), 1913 (New South Wales) and 1921 (Western Australia), Deaf Connect is a merged not-for-profit organisation supporting the Deaf, deafblind, and hard of hearing communities across the country with offices located in twenty locations including Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Darwin, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney. Deaf Connect offers a whole life range of services to support the community. Deaf Connect is a proud registered provider of My Aged Care since 2016 providing supports to older deaf, deafblind and hard of hearing Australians across the country, as well as being a Registered Training Organisation delivering accredited Auslan and Interpreting pathways.
Our mission is standing with the Deaf community, building capacity, and influencing social change. Deaf Connect is the largest Deaf, Deafblind, and hard of hearing specialist service provider in Australia with over 225 years of collective experience delivering quality services to the community across Australia in Auslan. Deaf Connect is also the largest employer of Deaf and hard of hearing people in Australia. Deaf Connect has a long and proud history of connecting with and engaging the Deaf community.
FACTS
- Auslan is the sign language of the Australian Deaf community.
- Auslan is recognised as a community language by the Federal Government (Dawkins, 1991).
- Auslan is one of the top ten language credentials held according to the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters.
- One in six Australian have some form of hearing loss, with that number projected to increase to one in four by 2050. Hearing loss is the second most prevalent national health issue yet remains the 8th national funding priority (Access Economics, 2006).
- According to the 2021 Census, which is at the conservative end, there are 16,242 Auslan users in Australia.
- Participants with a hearing loss as their primary disability are the fifth largest cohort of NDIS participants
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Deaf Connect welcomes the opportunity to provide a submission to the Attorney-General for the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) Review (the Review). For the purposes of this submission, we will be using ‘deaf’ when referring to all individuals with varying degrees of deafness. This includes members of the community who identify as Deaf, deaf, deafblind, hard of hearing, late-deafened and members of the Deaf community who identify as culturally Deaf and primarily communicate in Auslan.
Deaf Connect acknowledges that the scope of the Review is limited to the DDA legislation itself and the implementation of recommendations arising from the Disability Royal Commission. This submission is informed by policy implementation gaps observed using the DDA over recent decades, as well as by our organisational submission to the Department of Social Services’ Review of the Australian Disability Strategy (ADS) in August 2024.
This submission mirroring the structure of the Issue Paper’s seven parts and respond to deaf related issues only to selected questions of the following parts:
- Part 1 – Updating understandings of disability and disability discrimination
- Part 3 – Encouraging inclusion of people with disability in employment, education and other areas of public life
- Part 6 – Modernising the Disability Discrimination Act
Additionally, Deaf Connect supports several broader amendments under consideration including:
- Focus on social model of disability,
- Evaluating tests’ effectiveness in measuring direct and indirect discrimination, and
- Creation of a stand-alone duty to provide adjustments with prescriptive adjustments and a clear definition of who must comply.
Deaf Connect wishes to acknowledge the submissions of National Disability Services and the Queensland Disability Network, to which we contributed, and notably endorses their emphasis on including the digital environment as an increasingly critical area of public life under the duty to provide adjustments.
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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Part 1 – Updating understandings of disability and disability discrimination
- How should disability be defined in the Disability Discrimination Act?
- What factors should be considered in developing a new definition of disability?
Under the current DDA, deaf people are protected through Part 1, Section 4 (Interpretation), where the definition of disability explicitly includes (a) total or partial loss of the person’s bodily or mental functions, which covers hearing loss.
Deaf Connect recognises that the DDA was originally drafted in 1992 with a social model of disability in mind however the language in the current definition of disability requires modernisation to better reflect contemporary understandings of disability, moving away from negative or deficit-based terminology, to adequately address discrimination.
Under the current Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (DDA), deaf people are protected through Part 1, Section 4 (Interpretation), where the definition of disability explicitly includes (a) total or partial loss of the person’s bodily or mental functions, which covers hearing loss. However it is vital to recognise the unique experiences of deaf individuals within both disability and CALD (cultural and linguistic diversity) frameworks as supported by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights2 (ICCPR) concerning the rights of persons belonging to ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities (specifically Article 27. We reference the World Federation of the Deaf’s Discussion Paper titled ‘Complementary or diametrically opposed: Situating Deaf Communities within ‘disability’ vs ‘cultural and linguistic minority’ constructs’
‘Disability is defined according to a human rights model of disability. Under the social model of disability that precedes the human rights model, it is the interaction between an individual’s ‘impairment’ and barriers in society that creates ‘disability’. In other words, it is the environment that is disabling, not the ‘impairment’ itself.”
Deaf Connect references the Accessible Canada Act (ACA) for its proactive, barrier-removal approach and explicit recognition of sign languages, providing a valuable framework that could enhance Australia’s disability and anti-discrimination laws.
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In ACA Section 2 (Interpretation), comprehensive definitions of disability and barriers are provided, suitable for adoption:
- Disability is defined as “any impairment, including physical, mental, intellectual, cognitive, learning, communication or sensory impairment—or a functional limitation—whether permanent, temporary or episodic, or evident or not, that, in interaction with a barrier, hinders full and equal participation in society.”
- Barrier includes “anything physical, architectural, technological, attitudinal, based on information or communications, or resulting from policy or practice that hinders full and equal participation.”
For deaf individuals, this highlights that barriers often arise not from deafness itself but from the lack of accessible communication environments such as absence of Auslan interpreters, which thereby creates the discrimination against the individual or cohort.
ACA Section 5 (Purpose of the Act) explicitly recognises sign languages as primary communication languages for deaf persons which is suitable for adoption in an Australian context facilitating access to Auslan— the national sign language recognised by the Australian Government since 1991—and embed communication rights as central within anti-discrimination protections.
Deaf Connect supports discontinuing the comparator test in favour of the detriment test for defining direct discrimination, while acknowledging that its successful application can be affected by considerations of reasonable adjustments relating to inherent (essential) requirements and compliance.
- What test should be used to ensure that the definition of direct discrimination is easy to understand and implement for both duty holders and people with disability, and why?
- How could the definition of indirect discrimination be amended to ensure that it is easy to understand and implement for people with disability and duty holders?
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Regarding inherent requirements, Deaf Connect refers to Lyons v State of Queensland, where the court applied the comparator test and ruled the exclusion was due to the inability to perform essential duties without an interpreter, rather than deafness itself.
For deaf individuals, the comparator test is usually that the comparison person (a hearing person) is hypothetical what might have happened that focuses on the intent and comparison, not the actual impact on the Deaf person. It is our experience that many barriers (e.g. no Auslan interpreter, inaccessible emergency announcements or refusal to provide captioning) don’t have a valid comparator situation.
In contrast, the case of Tiahna Hurst v State of Queensland applied the detriment test where Ms. Hurst was denied an interpreter for educational purposes, resulting in detriment by denying her equal access to education. Though the claim ultimately failed on technical grounds and succeeding on appeal concerned compliance ability, the court acknowledged the condition to deny adjustment was unreasonable relative to her disability.
Through use of the detriment test, the DDA allows discrimination to be shown where the person with a disability was treated ‘less favourably’ and suffered a detriment, regardless of how others were treated. This approach shifts away from the DDA’s application based on the medical model of disability, as highlighted in the Issues Paper referencing the Productivity Commission’s findings, and align with the social and human rights model of disability, by focusing on real world disadvantage situations and barriers rather than hypothetical situations. For deaf individuals, this will allow complaints to be centred on the actual impact of discrimination such as being excluded from a workplace meeting without an interpreter, access to information in Auslan about disasters or emergency situations and access to Auslan interpreters at Government press conferences
- Should the Disabilities Convention be included in the objects provision of the Disability Discrimination Act?
- Should the Disability Discrimination Act be expressly required to be interpreted in a way that is beneficial to people with disability, in line with human rights treaties?
Deaf Connect strongly supports reference to the inclusion of the Disabilities Convention (CRPD) in the objects provision of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) and the requirement for the DDA to be interpreted in a manner beneficial to people with disability, consistent with human rights treaties. This ensures that provisions actively promote inclusion through positive duties—expanded in our response to Section 3—rather than merely prohibiting discrimination. Furthermore, this
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would provide recognition of the barriers to communications experienced deaf individuals to eliminate barriers and enable equal access and participation.
PART 3 – Encouraging inclusion of people with disability in employment, education and other areas of public life
- Would the creation of a stand-alone duty to provide adjustments better assist people with disability and duty holders to understand their rights and obligations?
- Should the scope of the duty to provide adjustments apply only to the existing areas of public life covered by the Disability Discrimination Act, or extend to other contexts?
Deaf Connect supports the creation of prescriptive adjustments with a clear definition of who must comply particularly if minimum requirements are to be adopted. The DDA could adopt a similar model to the Workplace Gender Equality Act which targets larger employers, universities and large businesses while exempting small employers where reasonable adjustments would cause unjustifiable hardship.
This would address the current self-advocacy burden placed on people with disability, particularly deaf people, who often must disclose their disability to gain protections under anti-discrimination laws. Such an adjustment would drive social transformation toward inherently accessible and inclusive environments, reducing reliance on forced self-disclosure or individual advocacy to obtain necessary adjustments.
Deaf Connect also supports the submissions of National Disability Services and Queensland Disability Network, to which it contributed, particularly the push to include the digital environment as an increasingly important area of public life under the duty to provide adjustments.
Deaf Connect references the Accessible Canada Act (ACA), Section 5—Purpose of the Act— to model from in the scope of duty to provide adjustments apply only to the existing areas of public life covered by the Disability Discrimination Act.
“The purpose of this Act is to benefit all persons, especially persons with disabilities, through the realization, within the purview of matters coming within the legislative authority of Parliament, of a Canada without barriers, on or before January 1, 2040, particularly by the identification and removal of barriers, and the prevention of new barriers, in the following areas:
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(a) employment; (b) the built environment; (c) information and communication technologies; (c.1) communication, other than information and communication technologies; (d) the procurement of goods, services and facilities; (e) the design and delivery of programs and services; (f) transportation;”
PART 6 – Modernising the Disability Discrimination Act
- Should there be minimum requirements for action plans (such as through guidelines) and what should the minimum requirements cover?
Minimum requirements for action plans should be established, particularly for government and statutory authorities. This would support people with disabilities and duty holders to better understand their rights and obligations. Although reasonable adjustments are mandated under the DDA, the defence of unjustifiable hardship based on economic arguments means not all duty holders are obliged to strictly comply with minimum requirements. While reasonable adjustments are considered in the scope of the DDA the defence of unjustifiable hardship by the duty holder can offset the need to adhere to minimum requirements. With a clear definition of who must comply to minimum requirements, the DDA takes a balanced approach with reasonable adjustments and practical considerations with capacity and resources.
Deaf Connect supports the co-design of minimum requirements for action plans to ensure they reflect the needs of different types of barriers and disabilities, including the needs of deaf individuals This may include updating resources such as the PWDA Language Guide and referencing best practice exemplars like the Australian Local Government Association’s Disability Inclusion Planning – A Guide for Local Government. Such collaborative development will ensure action plans are practical, relevant, and effective in promoting disability inclusion.
Currently, enforcement under the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) relies heavily on individual complaints and conciliation processes through the Australian Human Rights Commission, which while valuable, is limited in addressing systemic issues given the DDA is individual based and presents barriers where the complaint is moved to the federal court given it is a cost-jurisdiction.
Adopting a more proactive regulatory role, like WGEA’s approach—with powers for audits, public reporting, and binding undertakings—could significantly enhance compliance.
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CONCLUSION
In closing, Deaf Connect welcomes the opportunity to submit to the Attorney-General’s Disability Discrimination Act Review and is ready to support the next steps.
Deaf Connect advocates for legislative reforms that not only protect but empower deaf people, ensuring their communication access needs – especially those who rely on access to information in Auslan.
This submission strives to contribute to a stronger, more equitable legal framework that enhances the quality of life of all people with disability including deaf individuals.
Deaf Connect looks forward to the release of the consultation findings and expects that these will be made accessible in Auslan simultaneously with their publication to ensure equal access for the deaf community.
Contact:
Brett Casey
Chief Executive Officer
redacted
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