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Argument, Think Autism Melbourne 2026
Workplaces know what excludes autistic staff and lack the will to change it
In short
At Think Autism Melbourne, a panellist argued that inclusion stalls for lack of will while information is abundant, and used the spread of open plan offices to show how.
Read it instead, 4 minutesThe transcript
The story
One panellist on the identity and intersectionality panel at Think Autism Melbourne on 30 May 2026, presented with SSI, did not think the problem was that people do not know. The facilitator, Georgia Prattis, had asked whether workplaces were ready for the obligations a reformed Disability Discrimination Act might place on them, and whether there was still a lot of education to be done. The answer turned the question around. “I don’t think more awareness and education is the issue,” the panellist said. “I think there’s abundant awareness, particularly in certain sectors, but there is a lack of will.”
The panellist was careful to say that the problem was contextual, that they could speak only to the sectors they knew, and that they had no answer to what they had observed. The panellist offered possible reasons rather than a diagnosis, suggesting it might be economics, or expedience. Systems change, the panellist said, is difficult and messy, and it demands discomfort from people who are privileged and powerful.
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Sources the story draws on
- Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics (opens in a new tab), University of Chicago Legal Forum, vol. 1989, p. 139 (Kimberlé W. Crenshaw); record in Columbia Law School Scholarship Archive
- The impact of the 'open' workspace on human collaboration (opens in a new tab), Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, vol. 373, no. 1753, article 20170239 (Bernstein and Turban); author copy in Harvard DASH
- Embracing silence: Creating inclusive spaces for autistic employees (opens in a new tab), Industrial and Organizational Psychology, vol. 17, pp. 357 to 359 (Joanna Maria Szulc, Gdańsk University of Technology), Cambridge University Press
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