Most organisations will tell you they support disability inclusion. Fewer will tell you what happens the moment that support is actually tested — at the hiring decision, at the accommodation request, and at the promotion decision.
That gap, between the stated attitude and the actual decision, has a name in the psychology literature: the attitude-behaviour gap. It’s a studied phenomenon with a working theory behind it — and that theory turns out to predict exactly where the gap will show up.
The theory: attitude is necessary, not sufficient
Psychologist Icek Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behaviour holds that intention to act isn’t driven by attitude alone. It’s shaped by three things together: attitude, subjective norms (what you believe others expect of you), and perceived behavioural control (how easy or hard the action feels to actually carry out).
A 2025 Australian study applied this model directly to disability hiring, surveying 1,419 employers. The result: an employer can hold a genuinely positive attitude and still not act, if the norms around them are unclear or if hiring and accommodating someone with disability feels harder than it is. Positive attitude is necessary. It was never sufficient on its own.
That matters because it predicts something specific: the gap won’t show up as random, isolated bias. It will show up wherever norms are unclear or an action feels difficult — three distinct decision points where that’s reliably true. Here’s what the evidence shows at each one.
At the hiring decision
A 2024 study in the Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology found that explicit community attitudes toward disability are generally positive, but implicit attitudes remain negative, with people with disability still stereotyped as incompetent. In practice, that split shows up as job applicants who disclose a disability being less likely to be contacted for interview than equally or less qualified candidates who don’t disclose.
JobAccess’s own 2025 report on the economic case for disability employment names this directly: despite generally positive attitudes, many employers “appear conflicted and reluctant” at the actual hiring decision. That’s the attitude-versus-norms split from the theory, stated as plainly as an industry body is likely to state it — the attitude is real, but so is the hesitation sitting right behind it.
At the accommodation decision
A national JobAccess survey (January 2024) found 60% of Australians are still unaware that workplace adjustments exist at all — down from 70% in an earlier survey. That’s a real gap either way, though worth naming honestly: the two surveys used different methodologies, so this isn’t confirmed as a genuine trend of improving awareness — it’s two separate snapshots, both showing the same large gap.
That’s the “perceived behavioural control” piece of the theory in its purest form: if you don’t know an adjustment is simple, funded, and already standard practice, it will feel harder than it is, and feeling harder is enough to stall action even where attitude is fine.
Deloitte’s 2024 global Disability Inclusion @ Work survey shows what that looks like once someone does ask. Nearly three-quarters of Australian respondents who requested a workplace adjustment were rejected — even though the most commonly requested adjustments cost the employer nothing to implement. The most common reason given wasn’t cost. It was that the request was judged “unreasonable,” a judgement made against no defined standard for what reasonable means. Awareness didn’t just fail to build; where it existed, there was no criteria to apply it against.
At the promotion decision
This is where the first two gaps compound. Australian Bureau of Statistics labour force data shows people with disability generally are noticeably less likely to hold management roles than people without disability — 10.8% do, compared with 12.5%.
A separate, more specific data source tells a starker story. A 2026 report from Women With Disabilities Australia, drawing on their own 2025 Economic Security Survey respondents (not the general ABS population above), found fewer than 5% held management or higher roles at all, and only 16% of women with disability report feeling represented in leadership, against 23% of men with disability (AIHW data).
It would be reasonable to assume this is simply a pipeline problem that will fix itself as more people are hired. The data says otherwise: the Australian Public Service’s own interim evaluation of its Disability Employment Strategy found representation actually declining among graduates and trainees. The leak isn’t a late-career ceiling. It starts near the very beginning of the pipeline — at exactly the point where “not ready yet” first becomes an available answer, with no defined standard behind it either.
Why this isn’t an individual-deficit problem
Mapped against the theory, each of the three decision points fails in a different, specific way. Hiring fails on subjective norms — attitude is positive, but so is a background hesitation nobody names out loud. Accommodation fails on perceived behavioural control — the action feels harder and riskier than it actually is, so awareness alone can’t fix it. Promotion fails because the first two failures compound, then meet a third: no written standard for what “ready” means, so the decision defaults to whatever feels easiest to the person making it.
None of this requires believing any individual manager or recruiter is acting in bad faith. It requires noticing that “attitude is positive” was never actually the whole test — and building the parts of the system that were missing.
If you hold positional or budget authority
Check whether your application process asks for disability disclosure before or after the interview decision. If it’s before, that’s the exact point where the interview-callback penalty operates — moving disclosure later in the process removes the opportunity for it to happen at all.
Pull the last 12 months of adjustment requests, if your organisation tracks them. Look specifically at rejection reasons. If “unreasonable” appears without a documented cost or process reason attached, that’s the accommodation gap showing up in your own data.
Write down what “ready for promotion” actually means for your next review cycle, specific enough that two different managers would reach the same answer. Then check who that standard has been applied to over the last two cycles — and check representation at graduate and entry level too, since that’s where the leak often starts.
Make adjustment awareness someone’s actual job, even part of one. A 60% unawareness rate doesn’t hold steady for years by accident — it holds because no one is accountable for closing it.
If you don’t hold that authority
If you’re involved in shortlisting or sit on an interview panel, notice when candidates who’ve disclosed a disability drop out before the interview stage with no reason recorded. That’s the exact pattern the research describes, and naming it in the room is often the only check that exists.
Document requests and the reasons given for rejection, even informally. A pattern is invisible until someone is tracking it — and patterns get a structural response, where a single incident gets an apology.
Know the no-cost adjustments before you need them. If a request that costs nothing gets called unreasonable, you’re in a far stronger position naming that plainly than debating it in the moment.
Flag patterns to whoever holds governance or HR oversight, even if it isn’t your role to fix them. Structural problems get fixed by the people positioned to fix them — but only once someone shows them the pattern exists.
Over to you
Of the three decision points — hiring, accommodation, promotion — which one is your organisation weakest at, honestly? You don’t need to name your organisation, just the gap. I suspect most people reading this already know the answer before finishing the question.
Sources
Mahasneh, Randle, Gordon, Algie & Connolly (2025), “Predictors of Employers’ Intention to Hire People With Disability”, applying Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behaviour (1991)
JobAccess, “The compelling case for disability employment in Australia” (2025)
Antonopoulos, Sugden & Saliba (2024), “Workplace inclusion: Exploring employer perceptions of hiring employees with disability”, Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology
Australian Bureau of Statistics, “Disability and the labour force”
Women With Disabilities Australia, “Leadership, Representation and Decision-Making” (2026), citing the 2025 WWDA Economic Security Survey and AIHW data
Australian Public Service Commission, Disability Employment Strategy 2020-25 Interim Evaluation (2023)
JobAccess national survey on workplace adjustment awareness (January 2024)
Deloitte, “Disability Inclusion @ Work” global survey (2024)
Work With Me
If any of the questions in this edition sit unanswered in your organisation — what “ready” means, why requests get rejected, whether your adjustment awareness is anyone’s actual job — that’s usually the first sign a plan needs review, not a rewrite from scratch.
Ainslee Hooper Consulting works with organisations on:
- DIAP development and review
- Governance and committee reviews
- Co-design and stakeholder engagement
- Disability Inclusion Outcomes Framework™
- The Inclusion Lens
📅 Book a free intro conversation 📋 Workplace Disability Inclusion Assessment (free resource) 🧭 Framework Strategy Call
Making Inclusion Work is written by Ainslee Hooper, disability inclusion consultant and applied anthropologist. Remove invisible barriers. Reduce the risk of ableism.
