Deb Roach is a three-time pole dancing world champion.
She loves to twist and pivot her way around a pole, teaching her students how to manoeuvre.
"Just being able to show up with a room full of other women … to be united in celebration of what our bodies can achieve is incredible," she said.
"Teaching pole dancing is the most rewarding job I have ever had."
Ms Roach, 40, was born with an upper-limb difference and lives with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a connective tissue disorder.
She won international pole dancing championships in 2012, 2015 and 2018.
"The first title was definitely the biggest win, because I went from being no one to having global recognition for doing something that the world simply hadn't seen before," Ms Roach said.
Performing at a high level was about celebrating what her body was capable of and how the pole made her feel.
"It was about everything I could bring to the stage and what I stood to share with the audience," she said.
'We're different, not less'
Ms Roach has performed all over the world, including in the United Kingdom, where she lived for a number of years and was first introduced to the Disability Pride movement.
The movement is not about hiding nor masking disability, but accepting life is different without feeling less valuable to society.
Advocates do not deny there are difficulties, but they are balanced by recognising there can be opportunities in life that flow from disability.
Since moving back to Australia in 2016, Ms Roach has had the opportunity to perform at Sydney's Inner-West Disability Pride Festival, held annually for the past two years.
Run by a team of volunteer disabled people, the festival celebrates disability as part of human diversity and rejects stigma and exclusion.
Hannah Solomons heads up the team of volunteers and said Disability Pride goes beyond respect and equality.
"We deserve to be not just visible, but celebrated and embraced as part of society," she said.
Ms Solomons — who is autistic and lives with epilepsy and mental health issues — said building community and solidarity with the team running the festival had made her feel valued and visible.
Fellow volunteer, Jane Scott — who has cerebral palsy — said disabled people were often "on the edges" of society.
However, at the Disability Pride Festival, she said, "we are the ones on the stage".
Kerry Chin, who is also autistic, and Alex Craig, who is blind, are two of the other volunteers.
Both wanted to make the point there is nothing wrong with disabled people.
"Pride is the opposite of shame — it's not about saying we're better than other people," Mr Chin said.
"It's just saying that we are who we are. We are unapologetically ourselves and that we're different, not less."
'Community is out there'
The start of the Disability Pride movement can be traced back to 1990, the same year the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into legislation.
Back then, the first event was held in Boston in the US but, as the movement has grown, more and more cities across the US and the UK have taken up the flag.
Australia has lagged behind those countries.
In 2015, activists in Adelaide launched an annual Disability Pride parade, but enthusiasm waned after three years.
The volunteer group from inner-west Sydney is aiming to hold festivals annually, with each one bigger and better than the last.
They also lobbied the Inner West Council to raise the Disability Pride flag to celebrate International Day of People with Disability, becoming the first council in Australia to do so.
As the team plans for next year's festival, their hopes for the future of Disability Pride are ambitious.
"Wouldn't it be awesome if in 10 years you didn't have to explain to anyone what the words 'Disability Pride' actually meant?" Ms Scott said.
Ms Solomons would like to see disabled people thought of as a "beautiful" part of diversity.
Alex Craig said they wanted disabled children and teenagers to know "their community is out there and around them".
'We need to be proud'
It wasn't a simple journey for Ms Roach to feel pride in her disability.
At school, she felt ostracised.
Ms Roach said she was kicked off the school netball team for bringing down its performance.
And when she was accepted to dance camp in Year 8, Ms Roach was told by a fellow student there was no point in her attending because her limb difference made her a "broken line".
"It was brutal. There were a lot of life lessons," she said.
"I really struggled with that sense of self-worth and self esteem, but … I was always really determined to prove other people wrong."
It was a chance encounter with performers at an industrial nightclub in 2007 that introduced her to pole dancing and changed her life.
"I think we all have to overcome so much to be the people who we want to be — and this is the person [who] I want to be," Ms Roach said.
All she wanted was to dance and the chance to live her life while "enjoying being in her different body".
That's something she now shares with her students, disabled or non-disabled, empowering them to work with what they've got on any given day.
"We need to be proud of who we can be and who we are, so we are able to take that space that is difficult to step into."
The ABC is partnering with International Day of People with Disability to celebrate the contributions and achievements of the 4.4 million Australians with disability.
