Our First Update for 2026: Standing for Blind Leadership, Committed to Collaboration
Dear supporters,
Welcome to our first update for 2026, and thank you for your continued support of United Blind Leaders and our work to advance blind leadership.
We are writing to share a public statement released today in relation to the launch of the RISE Program by Blind Citizens Australia. As Australia’s representative organisation of people who are blind or vision impaired, BCA plays a critical role in shaping expectations across our community and the broader disability sector. United Blind Leaders recognises and respects that role, and we remain committed to working collaboratively with BCA to strengthen blind leadership.
At the same time, we believe it is essential to speak openly where matters of principle are at stake. While we welcome BCA’s renewed focus on leadership development, we are deeply concerned that a publicly funded program intended to improve employment and leadership outcomes for blind and vision-impaired people has been framed in a way that expects blind leaders to provide skilled mentoring on a voluntary basis.
We raised these concerns directly with BCA prior to releasing this statement and continue to hope for a resolution that reflects shared values of equity, inclusion and respect for lived-experience expertise. Because the issue goes to the heart of how blind leadership is valued and professionalised, we believe it is important to set out our position clearly and publicly.
Below is our full public statement. We encourage you to read it in full and to share it with others who care about blind leadership, fair employment and genuine inclusion.
Thank you for standing with us as we continue to advocate firmly, respectfully and in good faith.
Warm regards,
United Blind Leaders LTD
Public Statement: Valuing Blind Leadership Means Paying Blind Leaders
United Blind Leaders congratulates Blind Citizens Australia on the launch of the RISE Program and welcomes its renewed focus on identifying, supporting and developing blind leaders. We have consistently said - and continue to believe - that intentional investment in blind leadership is essential to strengthening our community and for expanding employment and leadership opportunities for people who are blind or vision impaired.
It is precisely because we support this goal that we must speak publicly about a fundamental concern.
Despite our best efforts over several months to engage constructively with BCA, and despite clearly raising our concerns directly with its Board ahead of making this statement public, BCA has chosen to proceed with a publicly funded leadership program that expects blind leaders to act as mentors on a voluntary basis.
United Blind Leaders believes this is wrong.
When leadership and mentoring are core components of a government-funded program, they must be appropriately valued and remunerated.
Expecting blind leaders - many of whom are already navigating systemic barriers to employment and advancement - to donate their professional expertise and lived experience in this context sends the opposite message to the one the program intends to convey.
Blind leadership is not a hobby.
Lived experience expertise is not informal goodwill.
Mentoring is skilled, professional work.
We acknowledge that, historically, blind leaders have often volunteered their time in good faith, including in programs like BCA’s Executive leadership Program, which was funded from organisational reserves. However, where public funds are provided specifically to increase employment and leadership outcomes for people who are blind or vision impaired, it is neither equitable nor consistent with those objectives to rely on unpaid expertise from the very people the funding is meant to benefit.
We are particularly disappointed that this decision has been publicly reaffirmed despite repeated requests from United Blind Leaders for discussion and despite our clear articulation of the impact this approach has on blind leaders and the broader message it sends about the value of our contribution.
Let us be clear: advocating for payment is not about self-interest. It is about setting the right precedent for the next generation of blind leaders. If leadership development programs normalise unpaid work, we entrench the very barriers we claim to be dismantling.
United Blind Leaders remains committed to collaboration with BCA and to supporting initiatives that genuinely strengthen blind leadership. We applaud BCA’s return to prioritising leadership development and hope this program succeeds. At the same time, we will continue to take a firm and public stand on the principle that blind leadership must be properly recognised, respected and paid.
Anything less undermines the credibility of our collective advocacy for inclusion, equity and employment.
Additional clarification
Since sharing this statement with Blind Citizens Australia, United Blind Leaders has received correspondence from them, acknowledging that the Member Update referring to voluntary mentoring contained an error and advising that no final decision has yet been made regarding the remuneration of mentors under the RISE Program. Meanwhile, the call for mentors remains open and continues to leave blind leaders unclear about the basis on which they will be engaged.
While we welcome the acknowledgement and note that BCA has advised the matter remains under consideration, the response does not provide assurance that blind leaders’ expertise will, in fact, be appropriately remunerated. Nor does it address the immediate impact of publicly framing mentoring as voluntary within a government-funded leadership initiative.
This is particularly concerning given BCA’s role as Australia’s representative organisation of people who are blind or vision impaired. As the organisation charged with advocating for our rights, inclusion and economic participation, BCA sets norms and expectations not only for its own programs, but for the broader disability and blindness sectors. When unpaid leadership labour is presented as acceptable within a publicly funded program, it risks legitimising that approach well beyond a single initiative and has the potential to damage how blind leadership is publicly perceived and valued.
In this context, resolving the issue after the fact is not sufficient on its own. We believe BCA also owes the community it represents an apology for the poor judgement involved in designing and publicly promoting a leadership program based on unpaid mentoring, and for the harm this has caused to the standing and professional recognition of blind leaders.
The absence of a clear commitment to payment, even while discussions are ongoing and BCA continues its search for mentors, reinforces our concern that blind leadership is still being treated as discretionary rather than professional. For United Blind Leaders, the principle is straightforward: where blind leaders are engaged to deliver skilled mentoring as part of a funded program, they should be paid for that work.
We remain open to dialogue and sincerely hope BCA’s deliberations result in an outcome that reflects its representative role and aligns with the principles of equity, inclusion and employment that it exists to advance.