Do we like them?Do we like Dylan Alcott?
Our score: 9 out of 10. Years of putting his name and money behind people with disability, with nothing harmful turning up in his own words or acts.
Alcott is a Paralympic gold medallist who built his post-tennis life around access and inclusion. The clearest example is Ability Fest, the Melbourne music festival he founded in 2018, which gives 100 per cent of its proceeds to the Dylan Alcott Foundation.
The foundation is the real engine of his public life. It funds scholarships, sports programs and entrepreneurship initiatives for young Australians with disability, including a university scholarship worth up to $10,000 a year for three years, which gave its first awards in 2024.
He is not shy about picking fights, but they are on behalf of other people. In June 2020 he accused the US Open of “blatant discrimination” after it dropped its wheelchair event, saying disabled players were not consulted. He wrote that it was wrong for able-bodied people to decide on his behalf, and organisers had not responded when the story ran.
He took the same line on money in 2022, saying wheelchair players at the Australian Open got less than half what a first-round loser in the able-bodied draw collected. His point was simple: wheelchair players generate value and belong on the same stage. That is a bloke using his name to push for a fairer deal for a whole group of athletes.
On the harm test, we searched for anything he has said or done against LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants, public health or the planet and found nothing. We also found no court cases or credible allegations against him. To be fair, the record on LGBTQ+ and climate topics is thin, because his public life has centred on disability, so we can't call it a distinction.
Lately he has stayed busy with festivals and TV work rather than controversy. Nothing damaging came up this year, and the 2026 news we found is about Ability Fest and its accessibility features, such as Auslan interpreters, live captioning and free carer tickets.