This week I attended a very exciting event hosted by Forster, a leading communications agency based in London.

The event looked at how businesses, charities and policy makers can address the balance of how many people with disabilities there are - and how well they are represented in society. That includes: representation at work, in the media, and in civil society.

It was a good opportunity people to voice their concerns, identify barriers and opportunities for organisations of all sorts to change their practices and be more inclusive. The consensus was that, not only would more inclusive practices that embrace diverse representation enrich the perspectives and ideas that organisations can benefit from, but that it actually benefits their bottom line.

There was also a general feeling that reluctance to be inclusive was reflective of a need for attitudes and behaviour to change in our society.

Although 91% of people believe that disabled people should have the same opportunities as everyone else, many are not yet driven to change the way they interact with disability. That might be because people rarely do. In fact, 38% of people don't have personal contact with a disabled person at all. If you just account for university students, that percentage increases to 58%.

In these austere times of ours, seven million disabled people will be hit by £9 billion of welfare cuts in the United Kingdom…yet there is little said of how to increase the opportunities for employability and inclusivity.

So how can we all work together to achieve that change? What role would you or your organisation like to play in raising awareness on this issue and making a difference? You can start by registering your ideas with our 500 Bright Ideas campaign and posting here.