If you don’t know Dylan Alcott, you certainly will now! His Australia of the Year win this week and his ambition to drive conversations around disability awareness, are sure to help expel stereotypes and propel change in perceptions.

The importance of Dylan wining this award, is not only honouring the contributions of an Australian who has achieved great success as an elite athlete, media commentator, entrepreneur and disability advocate but it also challenges every one of us to leave our biases behind and expect more of ourselves and others so we can all live the lives we want.

As a person with a disability, Dylan eloquently reminds us that living with a disability is not the barrier to participating fully in every aspect of society. Instead it is our inaccessible environments, prejudices, biases and low expectations of people with disabilities and our inability to see a future different from today that stops all of us living our fulfilled lives.

Every day at TASC we work to make Australia a fairer, a more just and equitable nation through our legal and advocacy endeavours. We cannot wait to see what the next year brings for us all as Dylan is continuing to place the conversation around independence, inclusion and accessibility front and centre.

Some of these conversations will be hard for us to hear and will challenge us but listening and working together to create meaningful change will only strengthen opportunities for us all.

Congratulations to Dylan and we can’t wait to invite you to TASC!

#DylanAlcott #AusOfTheYear

Terri-Ann-Dwyer – TASC’s Manager – Social Justice Services