Community leaders should be people that inspire us to live authentically, motivate us to achieve our goals, and empower us to believe in our potential. However, ‘inspirational’ has a different connotation for people with a disability.

Throughout my youth, I realised that there was an obvious absence of people with disabilities from the tables of decision makers. Our voices were echoes, despite a critical need for infrastructural and attitudinal change. Our perceptive understanding of the communal barriers to connectivity, opportunity and inclusion are invaluable, yet, unheard.

Living rurally compounds the isolation felt by people with a disability. From travelling unfathomable distances for medical care, to being separated from our families and communities, we are among the most disadvantaged members of regional communities. Yet, individually and collectively, we harness unmeasured strength – not by ‘overcoming’ disability, but by constantly adapting to, trusting in and engaging with a society that wasn’t designed for us.

The perpetuation of the ‘inspirational’ mythology is deeply seated within our rural communities. I remember receiving an award for ‘attending an excursion’ – yet I didn’t do anything exceptional. My unsure handshake, uneasy acceptance and uncertain thanks, signalled to me that the award was emblematic of a culture of lower standards for the disability community. I am reminded of the notoriously humorous and articulate disability activist Stella Young who said she wants a world where: “(People with disability) aren’t congratulated for getting out of bed and remembering our own names in the morning.”

Too often, we find ourselves inadvertently subscribing to narratives that devalue the achievements of people with disability. We are fed stories of ‘triumph’, ‘resilience’ and insurmountable positivity in the face of ‘adversity’. It is our strength, our perseverance, our ‘courage’ that is celebrated, despite the unchanging social, cultural and infrastructural limitations that have pervaded our societies for centuries. We are not perceived as leaders, but as ‘victims of circumstance’.

The glorification of the lives of people with disability diminishes the need for our community to be at the forefront of a cultural shift. To meaningfully recognise people with disability means to recognise us as innovators, advocates, essential contributors to our rural communities. For me, the future of disability empowerment does not look like sensationalising our achievements or being ‘inspired’ by our ability to live fulfilled and meaningful lives, it means appreciating and using our lived experience to confront the status quo.

The continual marginalisation of rural voices has debilitated social change. However, it is our responsibility to sew a thread between our communities, to unite us as a collective, and use our diverse young people to guide us to authentic inclusion. As Australia embraces egalitarianism, people with disability are the centrepiece of creating an accommodating societal consciousness that prioritises empowering the individual to achieve. As we are 1 in every 5 of the Australian population, our diverse and intersectional experiences are instrumental to creating equitable environments for our communities.

Our youth with a disability are already change-makers, advocating on a daily basis for their rights as individuals confined by the idealism that we are ‘less-able’. The future of rural prosperity and unity needs to include creating a social and physical environment that allows all of our community to connect, contribute and incite change. Our youth inherit the society that we create. We cannot afford to merely tokenize people with a disability. As an intersectional and acquirable experience, youth with disability have the capacity to transform the lives of all. Positive change toward accessibility, means positive change for people of all ages, backgrounds and persuasions. The authentic empowerment of people with disability invariably strengthens our rural communities as inclusive and holistic reflections of our diverse nation.