2022 Australian of the Year Dylan Alcott will head up a Newcastle festival aimed at improving inclusion for people with disabilities.
The seven time Australian Open tennis champion and disability advocate will be part of the fourth annual Count Us In festival, which runs from September 4-24.
The festival includes more than 40 events and activities across the city including dancing, art, sports and social events.
Alcott will be the keynote speaker at a lunch for Hunter businesspeople to speak about improving employment opportunities for people with disabilities.
"We are delighted to welcome Dylan Alcott AO to lead the Hunter business community in an important conversation as we work together towards solutions for greater employment and workplace inclusion for people with lived disability," Newcastle lord mayor Nuatali Nelmes said.
Co-chair of City of Newcastle's Access and Inclusion Advisory Committee, councillor Margaret Wood said there was a strong focus on employment across the whole festival this year.
"Because our community told us and our committee members told us that employment was a really important issue," she said.
"That's reflected in the statistics which show that people with a disability have employment rates at about 20 per cent below the rest of the population."
The Count Us In program has been developed in collaboration with Community Disability Alliances Hunter (CDAH) and City of Newcastle's Access Inclusion Advisory Committee.
Community Disability Alliance Hunter executive director Andrew Vodic said the festival provided an "opportunity to showcase what people with disability can really achieve in the community when those barriers are taken away and we're given every opportunity to engage at the same level with everybody else".
"I think it'll be a great day when we don't need festivals to highlight the needs of people who disability," he said.
"Because that way we would then be achieving full inclusion and I think that full inclusion is that point where it becomes normalised and natural.
"We're always sort of seen as 'other' and I think a festival like this really does showcase that we are out in the community.
An estimated one in six Novocastrians live with a disability, but Mr Vodic said he believed there was still "fear" in the community around disability.
"We don't know how to respond to it and because we don't know how to respond, we tend to shy away," he said. "Whereas if people with disability are really loud in the community and really noticed then we see a situation where it becomes normalised."
Cr Wood said many disabilities were "hidden", meaning people in the community may not be aware of how common they are.
"But I think it's now time for us to be loud and proud about disability and to say 'we're here, we want to participate in the community fully, just as everybody else does'.
"That involves working on a number of fronts. It's not just about the ramps and the accessible toilets, although they are essential, but it's also about changing the way people think about disability."
