SDA & NDIS glossary

Plain-language definitions of the Specialist Disability Accommodation and NDIS terms that come up when you manage SDA property.

Core concepts

SDA (Specialist Disability Accommodation): Purpose-built or modified housing funded by the NDIS for participants with an extreme functional impairment or very high support needs. SDA covers the bricks-and-mortar dwelling, not the support delivered inside it.
NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme): Australia's national scheme that funds reasonable and necessary supports for people with permanent and significant disability, administered by the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA).
SIL (Supported Independent Living): NDIS funding for the support and supervision a participant needs to live in their home, such as help with daily tasks. SIL is the support; SDA is the dwelling. The two are funded and contracted separately.
Participant: A person with an approved NDIS plan. In an SDA context, the participant is the resident whose plan includes SDA funding for their dwelling.

Improved Liveability: An SDA design category for housing with a reasonable level of physical access and enhanced provision for people with sensory, intellectual or cognitive impairment.
Fully Accessible: An SDA design category for housing with a high level of physical access provision for people with significant physical impairment.
Robust: An SDA design category for resilient housing that reduces the risk to the participant and the community, and is designed to withstand harder use while remaining homelike.
High Physical Support (HPS): An SDA design category for housing with a very high level of physical access provision and assistive technology for people who need very high levels of support, including ceiling hoists and emergency power.

RRC (Reasonable Rent Contribution): The amount an SDA resident contributes towards their accommodation, generally up to 25% of the Disability Support Pension plus 100% of the Commonwealth Rent Assistance they receive.
MTA (Medium Term Accommodation): NDIS funding for accommodation for up to 90 days when a participant is ready to leave hospital or their current home but their long-term housing is not yet available.
Plan-managed: A funding management type where a plan manager pays providers on the participant's behalf and the provider issues a tax invoice, rather than claiming directly from the NDIA portal.
SDA provider fee: The management percentage an SDA provider or property manager deducts from the gross SDA and RRC income before disbursing the balance to the property owner.

Audit pack: A consolidated evidence bundle prepared for an NDIS audit. In MySDAmanager this is a one-click 7-section export covering certifications, incidents, complaints, participant plans, document expiry and audit-log integrity.
NDIS Practice Standards: The quality standards registered NDIS providers must meet, assessed by approved quality auditors at registration and renewal.
Reportable incident: A serious incident (or allegation) that a registered provider must notify to the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, with the most serious requiring notification within 24 hours.
Chain of custody: A complete, tamper-evident record of who accessed or changed a record and when. MySDAmanager maintains this with an immutable audit log secured by a SHA-256 hash chain.
APP 3 (Australian Privacy Principle 3): The Privacy Act principle governing the collection of solicited personal information, including the heightened conditions for collecting sensitive information such as health data, which underpins the participant consent workflow.
Notifiable Data Breach (NDB): A breach likely to result in serious harm that an organisation must report to the OAIC and affected individuals under Part IIIC of the Privacy Act.

MySDAmanager turns every one of these terms into a workflow, so the evidence is ready when an auditor asks.