Central Coast Council: Raising awareness of disability

Central Coast Council developed a VR experience as part of its wider strategy to improve Disability Access and Inclusion, particularly among business and in sport and recreation activities. The Council identified a need to raise awareness across the wider community of what people with a disability face in daily life.

The challenge

The Council wanted to improve empathy and build a better understanding of the needs of people with a disability in everyday scenarios, for community members, businesses and its own staff alike. Rather than present accessibility as a checklist of physical requirements, the brief was to help people feel, briefly and safely, what those barriers are like from the inside.

What was built

People Tech Revolution created a VR experience, co-designed with the Council's Access and Inclusion Reference Group, that gives users a first-person perspective of being a person with a disability. The experience covers two everyday environments, a beach and a shopping centre, chosen because they are ordinary public spaces most people move through without a second thought. In each, users are prompted to reflect on the different challenges and barriers a person with a disability might encounter there, rather than simply being told about them.

How it was delivered

The experience has been implemented across the community more than 200 times. Rather than a single launch event, it has been built into ongoing programs: it is used in teacher training programs, in internal council staff training, and in CSIRO-facilitated training sessions, giving it reach across educators, council employees and a national science agency's own training pipeline.

Results

As reported by the Council and PTR, the experience has become a recurring tool across multiple audiences, from schoolteachers to council staff to CSIRO-run sessions, rather than a one-off pilot. Its repeated use across teacher training, internal staff development and community sessions reflects the Council's continued reliance on the first-person format to build empathy for the everyday barriers people with disability encounter, and its fit within the Council's broader Disability Access and Inclusion work across business, sport and recreation.