Disability inclusion has been a focus of the IC Protection, Gender, and Inclusion (PGI) Working Group from the very beginning, with management support behind the ambition to embed it more systematically across our programmes and projects. Following the Team Europe Retreat in May 2025, where disability inclusion was identified as a priority topic, a roadmap was developed to strengthen inclusion and raise awareness within AutRC.  

To translate this ambition into practice, the PGI Working Group organized a Disability Inclusion Workshop together with ÖZIV Bundesverband für Menschen mit Behinderungen on June 10th, during our yearly Heads of Country Offices week in Vienna. This workshop was different from anything we usually do.

There were no panels, no seats, and no slides. Instead, we learned to feel the world from a different angle and to talk openly about what it means to live with a visible or invisible disability. We put on an aging simulation suit that made our bodies feel the weight of age. We took wheelchairs out onto the streets of Vienna and realized, within minutes, that what reads as a perfectly normal pavement from standing height becomes a genuine obstacle at wheel level. We navigated a room using only a white cane and simulation glasses, suddenly dependent on touch and sound in a space that had seemed completely ordinary seconds before. And we spoke with people who move through a world not built for them every single day, and we listened to what that actually costs them, not in abstract terms, but in the specific, daily friction. Ten minutes in a wheelchair does not give you lived experience, and nobody claimed it did. But it gives you something a training deck never can: a physical memory of what it feels like when the world does not quite fit you. Paired with the open exchanges with our trainers from ÖZIV, we were equipped with a different kind of knowledge that is hard to set aside when you are back at a desk making decisions about programs, spaces, and the people they are meant to serve.  

Participants’ feedback showed that the workshop was a great source of information and a good starting point for learning about disability inclusion. Participants also mentioned that they would be interested in follow-up activities to be able to work towards more accessible and inclusive environments in our IC programmes and projects. Building on this initiative, follow-up sessions are planned to provide space to jointly explore how we can better ensure that no one is left behind in our work.  

A huge thank you to the PGI working group for putting this together and to everyone at ÖZIV Bundesverband who brought their expertise and their own stories into the room.