Central Coast Council's disability-awareness project sits at the meeting point of government and disability services: a council-led program, but one built to change how an entire community understands and supports people with disability, in the same everyday settings, a beach, a shopping centre, aged care and disability service providers work in every day.
Central Coast Council developed a VR experience to build empathy and a better understanding of what people with a disability face in everyday scenarios, as part of its wider strategy to improve Disability Access and Inclusion across the community it serves. Co-designed with the Council's own Access and Inclusion Reference Group, it gives participants a first-person perspective of navigating a beach and a shopping centre with a disability, then reflecting on the barriers each presents.
It has since been delivered more than 200 times across the community, and has been incorporated into teacher training programs, internal council staff training and CSIRO facilitated sessions.
See also Aged Care & Disability in Our Work's industries pages, and Government & Public Sector, where this same case study also appears.