NDIS glossary

Plain-English definitions of NDIS words and acronyms — plans, funding, SIL, SDA, plan management and more — each with a detailed explanation, a real example and FAQs.

• Abuse, neglect and exploitation — Serious harms the NDIS safeguards against. Providers must act to prevent them and serious incidents must be reported.
• Access Request — The formal request to become an NDIS participant, assessed against the access criteria.
• Administrative Review Tribunal (ART) — The independent tribunal that reviews NDIS decisions after an internal review (replaced the AAT).
• Advocate — A person who helps you speak up, understand your rights and have your say. Disability advocacy is free and independent.
• Agency-managed (NDIA-managed) — When the NDIA holds your funding and pays your providers directly, so you use registered providers and claims go through the agency.
• Allied health — Health professionals such as occupational therapists, physiotherapists and speech pathologists who provide therapy supports.
• Assistive Technology (AT) — Equipment or devices that help you do everyday things more easily or safely.
• Auslan — Australian Sign Language — the language of the Australian Deaf community. The NDIS can fund Auslan-related supports.
• Behaviour support plan — A plan by a practitioner to understand and reduce behaviours of concern by improving a person’s quality of life and skills.
• Behaviour support practitioner — A person the NDIS Commission considers suitable to assess behaviours of concern and write behaviour support plans.
• Bilateral agreement — An agreement between the Australian Government and a state or territory about how the NDIS operates in that area.
• Capacity Building Supports — Funding to build your skills and independence over time.
• Capital Supports — Funding for higher-cost items like assistive technology and home modifications.
• Carer — A family member, friend or other person who provides unpaid care and support to someone with disability.
• Certification and verification — The two audit pathways used when a provider registers with the NDIS Commission, depending on the supports they deliver.
• Change of circumstances — Letting the NDIA know when your situation changes significantly, which may lead to a plan reassessment.
• Choice and control — A core NDIS idea: you decide what supports you use, who provides them and how, as far as possible.
• Community participation — Support to take part in social, recreational and community activities, funded within your Core budget.
• Complaint — Raising a concern about an NDIS provider, worker or service. You can complain to the provider or the NDIS Commission.
• Complex support needs — When a person needs support across several areas or services at once, often requiring more coordination.
• Conflict of interest — When someone’s interests could improperly influence advice or decisions, such as a coordinator steering you to their own services.
• Consumables — Everyday disability-related items you use up and replace, like continence products or low-cost aids.
• Core Supports — Flexible funding for everyday supports and activities.
• Culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) — People from a range of cultural, ethnic, language and religious backgrounds. The NDIS aims to be accessible to CALD communities.
• Decision-making capacity — A person’s ability to understand, weigh up and communicate a particular decision. It can differ by decision and over time.
• Developmental delay — A significant delay in a young child’s development that may make them eligible for early intervention.
• Dignity of risk — A person’s right to make their own choices and take reasonable risks, rather than being over-protected.
• Disability — An ongoing impairment — physical, sensory, cognitive, intellectual or psychosocial — that affects how a person does everyday activities.
• Disability Employment Services (DES) — A mainstream program, separate from the NDIS, that helps people with disability find and keep a job.
• Disability Support Pension (DSP) — A Centrelink income payment for people with disability. It is separate from the NDIS, which funds supports rather than income.
• Duty of care — A provider’s responsibility to take reasonable steps to keep people safe from harm, balanced with dignity of risk.
• Early childhood approach — How the NDIS supports children younger than 9 with developmental delay or disability.
• Early intervention — Providing supports early to reduce the future impact of disability or developmental delay and build skills sooner.
• Eligibility (access requirements) — The rules that decide who can become an NDIS participant, including age, residence and disability requirements.
• Evidence of disability — Information from treating professionals about your disability and how it affects daily life, used to assess access and supports.
• First plan — Your very first NDIS plan, which often focuses on getting supports started and learning how the scheme works.
• Functional assessment — An assessment of how your disability affects everyday activities, used to understand the support you need.
• Functional capacity — How your disability affects everyday activities — the focus of NDIS evidence.
• Funding periods — How your plan funding is released in instalments across the plan, rather than all at once.
• Goals — What you want to work towards; the supports in your plan are built around them.
• Group and centre-based activities — Supports delivered in a group or at a centre, such as day programs and shared activities.
• Guardian — A person appointed, often by a tribunal, to make certain personal or lifestyle decisions for someone who cannot. Different from a nominee.
• Home and living supports — The group of NDIS supports about where and how you live, such as SIL, SDA, ILO and MTA.
• Home modifications — Changes to your home, such as rails, ramps or a modified bathroom, so you can move around and do daily tasks more safely.
• Human rights — The basic rights and freedoms everyone has. The NDIS is built on the rights of people with disability.
• Impairment — A loss of, or difference in, a body function or structure. Impairments can lead to disability depending on their impact.
• Improved daily living — A Capacity Building category that funds therapy, assessments and training to build skills for everyday life.
• In-kind supports — Supports in your plan already paid for by a government arrangement, so you use a set provider rather than choosing your own.
• Increased social and community participation — A Capacity Building category that funds skill-building so you can take part in community and social activities.
• Independent living — Living as autonomously as possible, with support arranged around a person’s own choices about daily life.
• Individualised Living Options (ILO) — A flexible home-and-living support built around how and with whom you want to live.
• Informal supports — Unpaid help from family, friends and community that the NDIA takes into account.
• Informed consent — Agreeing to something after being given clear information and understanding it, freely and without pressure.
• Intellectual disability — A disability affecting intellectual functioning and everyday adaptive skills, usually present from childhood.
• Internal review (review of a reviewable decision) — Asking the NDIA to reconsider a decision you disagree with — the first step to appeal.
• Interpreting and translating — Language support so people who are Deaf or who speak languages other than English can take part in the NDIS.
• Key worker — In early childhood, one main practitioner who coordinates a child’s supports and works closely with the family.
• Lived experience — Knowledge and insight that comes from personally living with disability or a mental health condition.
• Local Area Coordinator (LAC) — A community partner who helps you understand and use the NDIS.
• Mainstream services — Everyday services like health, education and housing that work alongside the NDIS.
• Medium Term Accommodation (MTA) — Funding for a place to stay for up to 90 days while you wait for a confirmed long-term home.
• my NDIS portal (myplace) — The online portal where you view your plan, budgets and claims.
• Natural supports — The everyday help from family, friends, community and mainstream services that is not funded by the NDIS.
• NDIA (National Disability Insurance Agency) — The government agency that runs the NDIS, makes access and funding decisions, and manages plans.
• NDIA delegate — An NDIA staff member authorised to make decisions on the agency’s behalf, such as access and plan decisions.
• NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) — Australia’s national scheme that funds supports for people with permanent and significant disability.
• NDIS Appeals Program — Free, independent support to help people seeking an external review of an NDIS decision at the tribunal.
• NDIS Code of Conduct — The rules setting out how NDIS providers and workers must behave: safely, respectfully and honestly.
• NDIS plan — Your personal document setting out your goals and the funded supports for a set period.
• NDIS Practice Standards — The quality and safety benchmarks registered providers must meet.
• NDIS Price Guide — The Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits that cap what registered providers can charge.
• NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission — The independent body that regulates NDIS providers and handles complaints about quality and safety.
• NDIS Worker Screening Check — A national check of whether a worker is cleared to work in certain NDIS roles, overseen by the NDIS Commission.
• Nominee — A person formally appointed to make NDIS decisions (plan nominee) or receive information (correspondence nominee) for a participant.
• Occupational therapy (OT) — Therapy that helps you do everyday activities, and that can recommend equipment or home changes.
• Participant — A person whose access to the NDIS has been approved and who has an NDIS plan.
• Permanent and significant disability — A lifelong disability with substantial impact on daily life — central to NDIS eligibility.
• Person-centred approach — Designing supports around the individual’s goals, preferences and needs, with them at the centre of decisions.
• Physiotherapy — Therapy that supports movement, strength and physical function.
• Plan management — How your funding is managed and providers are paid: agency-managed, plan-managed or self-managed.
• Plan manager — A provider funded to pay your invoices and track your budget if you’re plan-managed.
• Plan reassessment — The review of your plan (formerly “plan review”) to update supports as your needs change.
• Planning meeting — The conversation where you talk through your goals and support needs to help build your NDIS plan.
• Positive behaviour support — Evidence-based support to understand and reduce behaviours of concern and improve quality of life.
• Price limit — The most a provider can charge for a support item under the NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits.
• Provider travel — Charges for the time or cost of a worker travelling to deliver your supports, within the NDIS pricing rules.
• Psychosocial disability — Disability that arises from a mental health condition. Not everyone with a mental health condition has a psychosocial disability.
• Psychosocial recovery coach — A worker who helps people with a psychosocial disability build skills, confidence and connections while working towards recovery.
• Quote — A written estimate a provider gives for a support, often needed for higher-cost items.
• Reasonable adjustments — Changes that remove barriers so a person with disability can take part equally, for example at work or in a service.
• Reasonable and necessary — The test the NDIA uses to decide which supports it will fund in your plan.
• Recovery — In mental health, living a meaningful life on your own terms, which may not mean the absence of all symptoms.
• Registered provider — A provider approved and audited by the NDIS Commission to deliver supports.
• Registration groups — The categories of supports a registered provider is approved to deliver.
• Remote and very remote — Location categories recognising the higher cost of delivering supports in remote areas, which can affect pricing.
• Reportable incidents — Serious incidents that registered providers must report to the NDIS Commission, such as abuse, neglect or serious injury.
• Restrictive practices — Actions that restrict a person’s rights or movement, which are strictly regulated under the NDIS.
• Safeguarding — The actions and systems that keep people with disability safe from harm and uphold their rights.
• School Leaver Employment Supports (SLES) — Supports that help young people build skills for work in the first years after school.
• Self-management — Managing your NDIS funding yourself — paying providers and claiming from the NDIS.
• Service agreement — The written agreement between you and a provider about the supports they’ll deliver.
• Service booking — An arrangement that sets aside agency-managed funding for a provider to claim against.
• Short notice cancellation — When you cancel a support without enough notice, so the provider may claim a set amount under the NDIS rules.
• Short Term Accommodation (STA) — Funding for short stays away from home, including respite, usually up to 14 days at a time.
• Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) — Specialist housing designed for people with very high or complex support needs.
• Specialist support coordination — A higher, time-limited level of support coordination for people in complex situations that need specialist help.
• Speech pathology — Support for communication and, for some people, safe eating and swallowing.
• Stated supports — Funding locked to a specific purpose in your plan that can’t be spent flexibly.
• Support category — A grouping of NDIS supports within a budget, such as daily activities or social participation.
• Support Coordination — Funded help to understand your plan, find providers and put it into action.
• Support item (line item) — A specific fundable support with its own code and price limit in the Price Guide.
• Support worker — A person who provides day-to-day disability support under the NDIS.
• Supported decision-making — Helping a person make their own decisions with support, rather than making the decisions for them.
• Supported employment — Support to work in a setting designed for people with disability, such as an Australian Disability Enterprise.
• Supported Independent Living (SIL) — Funded support to help you live as independently as possible, often in a shared home.
• Thin markets — Situations where few providers are available, so supports can be harder to find, often in rural, remote or specialised areas.
• Transport funding — Funding to help with transport costs where disability affects your ability to travel independently.
• Typical week — A picture of how you usually spend your week, used in planning to understand your support needs.
• Unregistered provider — A provider that is not registered with the NDIS Commission. Self-managed and plan-managed participants can choose to use them.
• Value for money — One of the things the NDIA weighs up when deciding whether a support is reasonable and necessary.

What this glossary is

The NDIS comes with a language of its own — acronyms, funding categories and phrases that can be hard to follow when you’re new. This glossary explains the words and terms you’ll meet across the scheme in plain English, so you can read a plan, talk to a planner or provider, and make decisions with confidence.

Each term has its own page with a clear definition, a longer explanation of what it means in practice, a real example, and answers to the questions people ask most.

How to use it

Browse the terms alphabetically and open any one to read the detail. If a plan or a provider uses a word you don’t know, look it up here first. Where a term connects to a form, a checklist or a template on Novida, we link to it so you can act on what you’ve learned.

NDIS glossary — common questions

What do the NDIS funding categories mean?

NDIS funding is grouped into three budgets. Core Supports fund everyday assistance and activities and are usually flexible. Capacity Building Supports fund things that build your skills and independence, like therapy. Capital Supports fund higher-cost items such as assistive technology and home modifications. Each has its own page in this glossary.

What is the difference between the NDIS and the NDIA?

The NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) is the scheme itself — the national program that funds disability supports. The NDIA (National Disability Insurance Agency) is the government agency that runs the scheme, decides who gets access, and manages plans. People often use “the NDIS” to mean both.

What does “reasonable and necessary” mean?

It’s the test the NDIA applies before funding a support. The support must relate to your disability, help you pursue your goals, be value for money, be likely to work, take account of informal supports from family and community, and be most appropriately funded by the NDIS rather than another system like health or education.

What is the difference between SIL and SDA?

SIL (Supported Independent Living) is the funded support that helps you with daily tasks and living skills, often in a shared home. SDA (Specialist Disability Accommodation) is the specialist housing itself, built for people with very high or complex needs. SIL is the support; SDA is the building.

Where can I find the official NDIS definitions?

This glossary is plain-English guidance written by Novida. The official definitions and rules are on ndis.gov.au and in the NDIS Our Guidelines. If an official definition differs from our summary, follow the official version — and use our glossary to make it easier to understand.

Novida is an independent directory, not the NDIA. We explain each form in plain English and link you to the official copy — always download and submit the current version from the official website, as forms are updated from time to time.