Designing inclusive publics: systemic listening in disability support
Across Australia and globally, disability policy increasingly promises to give people with disability a voice. Yet, as many people with disability can attest, having a voice is not the same as being heard. Recent research by Dr Laura Davy and Molly Saunders at the Australian National University explores radical listening as a potentially transformative approach to strengthening participatory democracy in everyday spaces.
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Democratic reforms have increasingly focused on amplifying voice, inviting people to consultations, co-design processes and advisory groups. These efforts are important, and frameworks like the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities have helped enshrine participation as a right.
But focusing on voice alone misses a critical question: who is actually listening and under what conditions?
Listening is not neutral. It is shaped by power, norms, and institutions. In disability policy, people’s perspectives are often filtered through assumptions about expertise, credibility, and what counts as a ‘normal’ communication style. As a result, even when people with disability speak, their contributions may be discounted, reshaped, or ignored.
This is why we need to shift attention from voice to listening.
What is “radical listening”?
One promising concept is radical listening. Unlike other definitions of listening, radical listening is not just about hearing what someone says, it requires openness to being changed by it. This emphasis on transformation through listening involves accepting the disruption of one’s assumptions and, at times, the destabilisation of the self through true dialogue.
Through its focus on transformation, radical listening offers important insights for policy actors and service providers, asking them to:
engage with lived experience as legitimate knowledge
question their own assumptions and frameworks, including about the expertise and agency of people with disability
dismantle dominant, exclusionary communication norms
In theory, this approach could reshape how disability policy works. In practice, however, it runs up against some major barriers.
The NDIS as a case study
The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is often celebrated as a participatory reform; it is a national system of disability support that is designed to give people choice and control. But evidence from inquiries and research tells a more complicated story. Many NDIS participants describe engaging with the scheme as stressful, adversarial, and disempowering.
Why does this happen?
Our analysis shows that listening is constrained not just by individual attitudes and interpersonal factors, but by system-wide dynamics:
Political priorities: Tensions between cost control and human rights limit investment in time-intensive, relational engagement.
Policy incentives: Underpaid, overstretched staff may lack the time, training, or support to listen well. In the NDIS, competitive service environment prioritises efficiency over relationship-building, leaving little time for meaningful listening.
Policy engagement and feedback mechanisms: Institutions may have inaccessible or non-existent complaints processes, and some consultation processes offer tokenistic opportunities to speak.
Policy rules and procedures: Hierarchical systems of power embedded within policy rules and procedures can limit listening. For example, within the NDIS, heavy reliance on professional assessments can override lived experience.
Service provider organisational culture and practice: Organisational cultures shape recognition, trust, and relational accountability. In the NDIS, a legacy of paternalism in provider practice continues to curtail opportunities for meaningful listening by maintaining authority structures that silence or discount participant perspectives.
Listening is a systems issue
While our case study focuses on the NDIS, the implications are much broader. We show that there is a need to rethink listening as something that operates across multiple levels, not just in conversations.
Our research maps listening as a layered system:
At the interpersonal level, listening depends on trust, empathy, and communication skills.
At the organisational level, it is shaped by workplace culture, processes, and time pressures.
At the institutional level, funding models, regulations, and policy priorities set the conditions for engagement.
At the societal level, broader beliefs about disability influence whose voices are valued.
These layers interact. Change in one area can enable or undermine change in another.
Systemic listening beyond disability policy
If we take listening seriously, reform must therefore involve coordinated, systemic changes.
Many public institutions, from health to social security, face similar challenges to the NDIS. They invite participation but struggle to respond meaningfully. The result is often frustration, disengagement and mistrust.
Systemic radical listening offers a way forward, reframing participation as an ongoing, relational and institutional responsibility.
As we discuss in our article, some practical measures governments could take include:
Redesigning incentives to value relationship-building and participant experience.
Strengthening support for independent advocacy organisations who play a crucial role in amplifying voices and holding systems accountable.
Designing policy and planning processes so that they treat lived experience as equal to professional knowledge.
Designing complaints and engagement mechanisms to proactively seek feedback, and be accessible, responsive, and capable of driving change.
Strengthening organisational culture and workplace entitlements to support staff in communication, disability awareness, and reflective practice.
Creating broader cultural change to challenge ableism and redefine whose voices matter.
Ultimately, our research shows that designing inclusive publics requires changing how we listen. If governments are serious about inclusion, they must invest not only in voice, but in the systems that make listening possible.
Moderator: Molly Saunders