International Day of People with Disability on 3 December each year usually passes by unremarkably. Sure, there might be a morning tea to attend, a ribbon to wear and a politician for a photo op. Other than that, it’s generally uneventful. But on IDPWD in 2010, something significant happened. The ABC launched the Ramp Up website; a place for disability news, discussion and opinion by people with disabilities, for people with disabilities. Many Australians, myself included, were thrilled to see this initiative from the ABC and the federal government.

Ramp Up was initially funded by the department of families, housing, community services and Indigenous affairs, when Jan McLucus was parliamentary secretary for disability and carers. The idea was that the federal government would provide seed funding to establish the site, which would eventually become part of the ABC's core business.

Under the editorship of disability advocate and writer Stella Young (along with part time sub-editor Karen Palenzuela for the past 16 months), the site has published over 500 pieces of original content since 2010. By far the majority of writing on Ramp Up is by people with disabilities. This was not a place to tell stories about disabled people. This was us, telling our own stories, without the distorting filter of the mainstream media, who are determined to turn us into objects of pity or inspiration, with little scope in between.

The success of Ramp Up is undeniable. We’ve been able to foster in-depth discussion on a broad range of issues, from Lady Gaga’s mobility aid props to voluntary assisted suicide and everything in between. Ramp Up has been a place where we can speak back to the ways in which the mainstream media reduces our lives to archetypes. It also provided a platform our perspective prospective on important social policy issues such as the national disability insurance scheme. Ramp Up was making the motto of the disability rights movement, "nothing about us without us", a reality.

So it was with great disappointment that I read about ABC's managing director Mark Scott’s decision to cease publication of Ramp Up. As of 30 June this year, the site will no longer be updated, though it will remain online as a resource, a reminder of a time in history when people with disabilities had a place within the ABC to call our own.

Our discussion space will be gone. The voice of people with disabilities, a voice the ABC has nurtured for the past three and a half years, will be silenced. While it is expected that Stella Young will remain employed as an ABC writer and broadcaster, the forum that successfully captured the rich diversity of the disability community will no longer be a part of the ABC.

It’s reasonable to ask why. Why has the ABC reneged on their commitment to keep the website alive beyond the expiration of government seeding grants? Hansard recording of Senate Estimates on 4 June bares witness to various former and current government representatives asserting that, in accepting the initial grants for Ramp Up, the ABC had entered into an agreement to integrate the cost of the site into its core operations. Closing the website, now that the funding has ceased, is evidence of failure by the ABC to fulfil its side of the agreement.

While I acknowledge that the ABC will have to make changes to absorb its 1% cut in their budget, why are people with disabilities among the first to lose out? We’ve had a long history of being silenced by institutions, literally and figuratively. Is it simply that we’re seen as the least important, and least likely to stand up for ourselves? It would be a mistake to underestimate us.

At a speech delivered in September 2009 to the Commonwealth broadcasters association, Scott spoke of his vision for the ABC. He said: “We see the ABC as Australia’s town square, a place where all Australians can come to listen and learn, to speak and to be heard.” He has spoken of the concept of the “town square”, especially in reference to the growing digital landscape, numerous times since.

People with disabilities make up almost 20% of the Australian population. Don’t we belong in the town square with the rest of you?