Disability

'These are our stories and our lives. Please, let us tell them.'

Person with disability

Recorded by Smith-Merry et al. 2022

For a long time, research and data about disability have been created without meaningful involvement from people with disability. When research is done about people with disability instead of with them, the results may not reflect lived experiences.

People with disability often have different experiences and outcomes in areas like health, mental health, employment, education, and housing. To understand these differences, people with lived experience of disability need to be involved in shaping the questions, the analysis, and how findings are used.

This is what inclusive research means. It involves working in partnership, actively listening and valuing lived expertise.

This project uses an inclusive research approach. It is supported by the National Disability Data Asset (NDDA), which helps us understand the experiences of people with disability using government data (NDDA 2026). Our team is exploring outcomes with and for people with disability so that the work focuses on what matters to the disability community and supports more fair and informed decisions.

Published reports

I am interested in:

• People receiving government disability supports
• National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) participants
• People receiving the Disability Support Pension
• NDIS participants receiving the Disability Support Pension

Where do I go for more information?

You may also be interested in:

• What is the National Disability Data Asset?
• Doing inclusive research
• How people with disability are represented