Disability education and engagement plan 2025–27

Our work on the Disability education and engagement plan 2025–27 (DEEP) is shaped by the 2 governing documents outlined below.

Strategy 2027

Strategy 2027 sets objectives for our whole organisation until 2027. It reflects the dynamic and complex environment we work in, and responds to new challenges including:

  • changes to the law
  • changes to the way people expect elections to run, including using technology
  • misinformation and disinformation across the media landscape and their impact on political views
  • decreasing trust in democratic systems
  • increasing threats to our systems and applications and a need for better cybersecurity.

The strategy has 4 thematic areas that guide our work and help address these challenges:

  • Trust – we are trusted to deliver electoral services with integrity and high quality.
  • Voters – we deliver a great voter experience.
  • Processes and systems – our processes and systems respond to a complex environment.
  • Wellbeing – our people are capable, engaged and satisfied.

These themes inform the goals and actions of our education and engagement plans.

Inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility (IDEA) framework

We are committed to providing inclusive and accessible services to Victorians and creating a workplace that reflects the diverse communities we serve. We aim to foster respect and prevent all forms of discrimination, harassment, and violence.

We are developing an IDEA framework which will explain how we will work with people of all ages, genders, sexualities, abilities, ethnicities, cultures, religions and socio-economic backgrounds. Our IDEA framework will build on our previous diversity and inclusion framework to increase trust in the VEC through recognising and celebrating diversity.

The VEC has a history of championing inclusion through initiatives such as our democracy ambassador program. The IDEA framework will support the goals of our education and engagement plans to help our staff and communities thrive.

Goals of the DEEP

True democracy must be accessible to everyone. People with disability face physical, cognitive, communication, sensory, neurological, and other barriers when participating in elections. We want to make sure that people with disability:

  • are active citizens engaged in electoral processes throughout their lives
  • are considered when planning and delivering electoral services
  • have more opportunities to enrol, vote, and engage in the democratic process.

The DEEP has 3 focus areas:

  • access
  • knowledge and confidence
  • relationships, visibility and representation.

The actions we will take to achieve these goals are outlined under the headings below.

Access

To improve access for people with disability we will:

  • review and evaluate our accessible enrolment and voting options
  • review our building access checklist for reasonable adjustments to voting centres and election ofces
  • expand the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower initiative
  • develop disability access keys for our head office and at least 2 voting centres for the 2026 state election
  • support people impacted by the ‘cognitive impairment’ provision in legislation
  • address barriers for parents, carers, and workers who help people vote.

Knowledge and confidence

To increase knowledge and confidence in electoral processes for people with disability we will:

  • recruit, train, and support people with lived experience of disability to become VEC democracy ambassadors
  • deliver electoral education through democracy ambassadors in specialist schools
  • develop and promote electoral education resources for people with disability.

Relationships, visibility, and representation

To build relationships with people with disability and increase their visibility and representation we will:

  • maintain relationships with, support, and seek advice from the Electoral Access Advisory Group (EAAG), people with disability, and other stakeholders from the sector
  • review issues in our customer feedback register that impact people with disability, and seek advice on addressing these
  • build the skills of carers and support workers to help people vote
  • review and evaluate the accessibility of recruitment and training processes for election casuals
  • deliver partnership programs with disability service providers
  • increase representation of people with disability in VEC campaigns and publications.

DEEP outcomes

At the end of the DEEP, some of the outcomes we hope to see are:

  • more accessible and inclusive voting options available to more people including low sensory voting, telephone-assisted voting, large print, and braille ballot papers and postal voting
  • reduced reports of accessibility issues during and after elections
  • more people with disability knowing how and feeling confdent to enrol and vote
  • more people with disability enrolling and voting
  • organisations that support people with disability promoting electoral education and supporting their clients to vote
  • having stronger engagement, visibility, and representation from disability stakeholders at the VEC
  • disability stakeholders having greater awareness and understanding of our work and the importance of electoral participation
  • improving our understanding of ‘unsound mind’ provisions, and the impacts of direct enrolment on voters with disabilities.

Measuring the success of the DEEP

The Electoral Commissioner, VEC Executive Management Group and staff are responsible for ensuring we achieve the actions in the DEEP. We will maintain a progress report for the DEEP and invite feedback twice a year from the EAAG.

We will also publish a yearly progress summary in our VEC annual reports.

This education and engagement plan is guided by its own program logic. The monitoring and evaluation plan includes measures and targets, using data from various sources that we report quarterly, annually, and for elections.

For a copy of the program logic, or monitoring and evaluation plan, please contact education@vec.vic.gov.au

Electoral Access Advisory Group

The Disability education and engagement plan 2025–27 was developed in collaboration with the Electoral Access Advisory Group (EAAG). The EAAG has 14 members including people with lived experience of disability, advocates and the following service providers:

  • SCOPE
  • Vision Australia
  • Yooralla
  • Carers Victoria
  • Blind Citizens Australia
  • AMAZE
  • VALID
  • Action on Disability within Ethnic Communities
  • Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission.

The EAAG gives us community advice, feedback and ideas to improve electoral engagement for people with disabilities.