Author: Emma Bennison, DANA CEO

After a week spent talking publicly about “inclusive communities”, I found myself crying on a plane tonight.

Not because anyone yelled at me. Not because of overt cruelty. But because one very ordinary interaction captured the exhausting gap between the rhetoric of inclusion and the reality many disabled people still navigate every day.

There’s no doubt it hit harder because of the week we have just had.

Disabled people have spent days listening to public conversations about “budget sustainability”, “cost pressures” and reducing supports, while media commentary increasingly frames us as expensive, burdensome and somehow separate from the broader community.

The message is devastatingly clear.

People with disability are being told that our participation is conditional. That our inclusion depends on whether we can justify our cost. That access, dignity and autonomy are negotiable when budgets become tight.

That wears even the most seasoned advocates among us down.

Tonight, I was boarding a Virgin Australia flight from Melbourne to Hobart. I was tired and emotionally spent after a week of bringing my lived experience into conversations about disability supports, community participation and what it means to build a society where disabled people genuinely belong.

I am blind and I travel independently all the time. I had already taken the same small bag on two flights this week without issue. But when I boarded this flight, the manager, Dean, refused to lift my bag into the overhead locker, citing safety policy.

I want to be fair to Dean.

I do not believe he intended to be cruel. I have no doubt he believed he was following process correctly and doing the right thing within the boundaries of his role. That is precisely why this story matters.

Exclusion is so often not about bad people. It is about systems and cultures that leave little room for judgement, flexibility or consideration of the human consequences decisions can have.

Now, this might sound like a small inconvenience.

But people with disability know that these moments are rarely just about the inconvenience itself.

Checking the bag would mean waiting for assistance at the other end, locating the bag with staff support and navigating another layer of dependence and delay after an already exhausting week. My flight was due to land in Hobart at 10:30 tonight, so I was deeply conscious that a meet and assist staff member would now need to spend additional time helping me find my bag before either of us could get home.

What appeared to be a simple procedural decision carried practical and emotional consequences for me and for the staff supporting me.

I tried to explain that. Dean was not persuaded.

This story is not really about Dean though.

It is about Casey.

Casey was the flight attendant escorting me to my seat. After the interaction, she quietly apologised. She told me she thought it had been mean. She said she would have helped me.

To my embarrassment, I burst into tears.

Not because of the bag itself, but because her kindness made me feel seen, validated and human.

Disabled people become so accustomed to absorbing these moments without fuss. Explaining, negotiating, adapting and minimising our frustration so other people do not feel uncomfortable. That’s why, when we are met with genuine empathy, it can feel unexpectedly overwhelming.

Casey’s kindness did not stop there.

When we landed in Hobart, she also helped me retrieve my bag and advocated internally after witnessing the interaction herself.

During the flight, another staff member, Simone, came to check on me because she had heard what happened and was upset by it too.

What Casey and Simone demonstrated is something our systems still too often fail to understand. That inclusion is not simply about policy compliance. It is not about whether a disabled person can technically access a service or physically enter a space.

It is about whether we can move through the world with dignity, autonomy and a genuine sense of belonging.

We hear a great deal at the moment about “inclusive communities”. Governments announce inclusion strategies and funding packages. Organisations release statements about belonging and participation. Entire conferences are dedicated to the idea that disabled people should be welcomed into community life.

Yet so much of the actual work of inclusion still falls to us.

We do the explaining. We do the negotiating. We do the emotional regulation. We absorb the embarrassment. We carry the administrative burden. We calculate whether speaking up is worth the risk of being labelled difficult. We thank people profusely for accommodations that should have been built into systems from the start.

What struck me most about this interaction was how ordinary it was.

No one swore at me. No one explicitly discriminated against me. No one intended harm.

Yet I still ended up crying in public, something I very rarely do.

Not because of one bag, but because of what the bag represented.

It represented the constant friction disabled people navigate every day. The endless small moments where systems are technically functional while still making it clear that your presence is inconvenient. That your independence is conditional. That your participation depends on whether the person in front of you chooses flexibility or rigid compliance.

The irony is that this interaction probably created more work for everyone involved. More staff assistance. More delays. More stress. Still, the reality is that too often, policies are interpreted through a narrow lens that mistakes inflexibility for fairness and procedural consistency.

Real inclusion requires judgement. Humanity. Trust.

That is why Casey and Simone gave me hope.

They reminded me what inclusion actually looks like.

Inclusion looks like people willing to respond with empathy, discretion and care.

Money alone will not build inclusive communities.

Programs alone will not build inclusive communities.

Slogans certainly will not build inclusive communities.

Until inclusion is genuinely baked into our communities, workplaces, transport systems and public spaces, we cannot pretend people with disability no longer need support.

The reality is that disabled people are still carrying far too much of the burden ourselves.

That is why supports like the NDIS matter. Not because disabled people are broken or incapable of participating, but because the world still places barriers in our way every single day.

The goal should absolutely be inclusive communities.

But we do not get there by withdrawing support before inclusion actually exists.

We get there by building communities where dignity, flexibility and belonging are so embedded that moments like this become unthinkable.

Somewhere between Melbourne and Hobart tonight, I realised again just how far we still have to go.

Originally Published on LinkedIn by Emma Bennison. Republished with permission.