Get ready for Disability Day and our 12-hour broadcast on Wednesday 3 December - ‘RIGHT RELATIONS & INNOVATIONS.’ This year’s theme is about disabled people’s visions of a safe future for everyone, and the relationships and innovations that can get us there. From disabled peoples’ relationship with unceded Indigenous land and Sovereignty, community relationships, arts and culture, access and inclusion, intimate relationships and ending violence, marriage equality for disabled people, forming families, assistance animals, transformative justice, disabled people’s relationships with technology, carer relationships, and so much more. 7am-7.30pm Wednesday 3 December.

Program details below. 

Artwork: Akin Shift – by Renay Barker-Mulholland 

“The words in my head, the ones I am supposed to focus on, the ones I feel like I am supposed to hear, I’m not hearing. Instead, I hear endless droning, until I disconnect from the artificial world.

Somewhere outside, are the words we need to hear.  The words that I want to hear, the words that will direct and guide me, are obscured. They are obscured by the noise, the opaque, milky distractions. 

Bubbling like seafoam, I navigate the waves. Waves from stories told by grandmothers who hold me in this seen realm, and the unseen ones, there is a constant push and pull. The words I am supposed to hear, and the ones I am pulled to.

Akin shifting, fine tuning"

When I created this work, I was focusing on the connection I have with the unseen parts of my life and how I seek guidance from my ancestors. I see more and more need for people to reconnect with Indigenous/First People’s ways of viewing the world, as they are the original cloud storage network. We can create a world that can bind the best of the binary ‘past and the future’. We can reconnect with each other, we are all we have, but we are also all we need.

In this artwork I wanted to combine a physical base of art, with a digital finish. This reflects the modernity and duality of all of us, and it’s a shift in our thinking that will drive change.  

Image Description: artwork that is dominated by deep, warm, jewel tones, with bright gold and yellow highlights. The bottom half of the work features two separate entities, both range from lavender to aubergine in colour, and are surrounded by a glowing blue light. There is a group of entities who are aquatic shades of blue on the bottom right of the work. There are lighter blue entities towards the top of the work, all are representative of unseen, and cyclical forces. The rich pinks and reds of the alternate parts of the work highlight the bright golden yellow network of circuitry that cloaks parts of the work the entities don't occupy.
 

7am  WEDNESDAY BREAKFAST: DISABILITY DAY SPECIAL 
Disability Day Worker Pauline Vetuna and former breakfast presenter Ayan Shirwa welcome you to the Disability Day Breakfast, talking ‘Rights Relations & Innovations’. 

Featuring music by ICONYX, the Our Stories Our Flats podcast, an interview with Lebanese and Palestinian scholar Dr Lina Koleilat on resisting the erasure of the Palestinian people, part of the late great Alice Wong’s future tech talk ‘The Last Disabled Oracle’, an excerpt of yillamin episode on right relationship with Country and the responsibility of settler accomplices, and documentary features from Audio Ability mentorship graduates. 
LISTEN HERE
Transcript here
 

8.30am  Raising Our Voices: A Happier Safer Inclusive Future for ALL
The Raising Our Voices Team will interview Janet from the VSAN network and talk about the work VSAN have been doing in regards to safety for people with disability. They will share their lived experiences and explore who can help make the community a safer place. The team will also share what a happier safer more inclusive world means to them and how we can get there.
LISTEN HERE

9am  Surviving Health Care 
SLOw is a fully sicko, anti-capitalist speed embodying the wisdom of slowing down, as known by disability pensioners Danielle & Shev. Danielle & Shev get together for a chat about late diagnosis, privilege, getting services from an inadequate system, stigma and disability inclusion in activist spaces.
LISTEN

9.30am  Disability and Melbourne Public Transport 
Presented by William MacGroarty (2025 CMTO Audio Ability Mentee) and Tilde Joy (Slacker Radio, The Vibe Consultant) this programme will cover disabled people's relationship to the public transport network in Melbourne centring the lived experience of a vision impaired and neurodivergent traveller. While acknowledging features of the network which currently provide access to travellers with a disability this programme will highlight gaps in the existing infrastructure and disabled people's urgent need for innovation in Melbourne's public transport systems.  Melbourne on Transit.
LISTEN

10am  Mapping Our Care Webs: Strategies for Imperfect Survival
Presented by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, part of the Disability Unbound Lecture Series (produced by Disability South and Disability South Rising). 

Care is a need and a right, for everyone but especially those of us who are disabled. However, care is also complicated- it's not always been safe or accessible for many of us to give, ask for and receive the care we need, and we often face conditions of scarcity. However, we know as disabled people we are creative and resourceful in figuring out how to get our needs met, even if it's in deeply imperfect conditions.
LISTEN

10.30am  Hear Our Good Stories
South Sudanese community carers and clients share stories of great NDIS care and the relationships that can support people with disabilities. Presented by Ajak Mabia (Ubuntu Voices).
LISTEN

11am RIGHT RELATIONS 
Care for Children, Care for Elders, Care for Country, care for Ancestors.

Beginning with 5 minute feature 'Camp Sovereignty: Safety and Accessibility' by Uncle Robbie Thorpe, and featuring the voices of Renay Barker-Mulholland, Gi Brown, and Aunty Sue Coleman-Haseldine.

Presented by Disability Day Worker Pauline Vetuna.
LISTEN

12pm yillamin 
On this special edition of Yillamin, we bring together First Nations voices to explore what “Right Relations and Innovations” truly mean in the context of disability justice on this continent. Through grounded conversations, lived experience, and community-led insight, we look at how our people are reshaping support, care, and collective responsibility; while confronting the deep failures of colonial institutions that continue to harm our mob. Featuring contributions from grassroots organisers, community workers, and those building deadly alternatives like Blackfulla-led wellbeing and crisis-prevention programs, this broadcast centres strength, cultural knowledge, and the future we are creating together.  Presented by Keiran Stewart-Assheton.
LISTEN

1pm BIPOC Arts  
BIPOC Creative Access Collective members Pearl Blackk (Artist & inclusive community facilitator) and Natasha Peiris (Bi-Cultural Disability Support worker, Ayurvedic Practitioner and Ayurvedic Postpartum Doula, Decolonial Alchemist and Well-being Advocate and Educator). 

They talk to Pauline (Disability Day worker) about their arts practice, healing modalities, and cultural humility. Program also features music by BIPOC artists with chronic illness or disability.
LISTEN

1.30pm  Self-advocacy: setting sail for a positive future  
VALID staff share real stories of hiring people with disability, and how they co-design programs that lead to better services and reform.
LISTEN

2pm Holding Breath 
An invitation to listen in, attune to, hold breath and be in solidarity with those in our community living with Long Covid. In collaboration with Dr Poppy de Souza, we bring you stories gathered from her Holding Breath exchange and from the Race Matters community, reflecting on their experiences and responding to: what do we carry with us? what do we leave behind? Together, these voices bring collective wisdom, and offer ways of living with/in embodied discomfort and crip ways of moving through the world.  Credits:  Holding Breath project, Jenna Bitar’s essay in Sick Times “Instead of supporting people with Long Covid, our government funds a genocide”, Still Here podcast from The Sick Times, Breathing 4 Justice - exploring the intersections of long Covid and disability justice (U.S.),The Colour of Long COVID series, supported by the Disability Visibility Project.
LISTEN

3pm Unspeakable 
Alicia Zhao shares an intimate dialogue with friend, artist and advocate Dakota Quin. Facing the question of the body no longer being a productive vessel for capitalism, Dakota’s artistic and activist work seeks to find the pleasure and possibilities of embodied liberation. We learn about their story and how it culminated in the upcoming film, Unspeakable, a body of work in collaboration with Esther Bridget Joy.  Read more about and support the Unspeakable documentary: Rediscovering Sexual Liberation After Sexual Violence, and follow their instagram for updates.
LISTEN

Arvo Interlude
A lush musical break for your afternoon.  Featuring music by Naarm-based alt pop singer, songwriter, producer, and shapeshifter, June Jones.

4pm Chronically Online Friendship
Kaitlyn Blythe explores the challenges and benefits of friendship while disabled. Social isolation is a common experience for chronically ill and disabled people, especially when we face ableism from our immediate family and non-disabled friends. Friendship between disabled folks becomes essential to our mental health. This one-hour program explores the importance of online communities to disabled people, and how disabled people use social media to make space for each other. Kaitlyn is the host of the Just A Spoonful podcast, where she hosts conversations with other disabled and chronically ill creatives. Find more of her work at patreon.com/blythebyname.
LISTEN

5pm Brainwaves 
In the first half hour, bestselling author Jennifer Scoullar joins Brainwaves host Flic Manning to talk about her new novel ‘Wild Horses’ — and the powerful role relationships with animals, with nature, and storytelling can play in supporting mental wellbeing.

In the second half, Brainwaves host Mark Eastwood interviews lived experience embassador for Blue Knot Foundation, Sue. They discuss Sue's lived journey of living with complex trauma, the tools that have worked for her in navigating living and relating with the condition, and her advocacy work. Blue Knot advocates for and provides support to people who have experience of complex trauma, and those who support them. 
LISTEN

6pm The Boldness: Back to Country
"When you look after country, it looks after you." Kim Frank-Koczwara talks about her connections to Broome, her spiritual home.  Presented by Raphael Kaleb.  
LISTEN

6.30pm Bodily autonomy & sex work 
Produced by Amy Ciara (she/her) of Kill Your Lawn & Kick Your Fence. Guest Charlie Bear (they/them) interviews Melinah Viking (she/her) about autonomy and belonging as an ably diverse sex worker. Melinah is an award winning porn, cam and full service sex worker, and advocate. Charlie is a hands on sex worker who specialises in working with neurodivergent, disabled and queer clients.
LISTEN

6.50pm  NDIS/Sex Work
Presenter James Harkness interviews two sex workers, Kai and Pixie, about the NDIS changes which occurred in October 2024, which now prevent people with disabilities from using their NDIS funds to pay for sex workers.
LISTEN

7pm Women on the Line A tribute to the late disabled writer and activist, Alice Wong.
LISTEN