When Janet Smith arrived to head up Scottish Dance Theatre (SDT) in 1997 her job description probably didn't specify opening doors – but that's exactly what Smith has done in a wealth of far-sighted ways ever since.

She's opened up a new national and international map of performance spaces for the company, even as she's opened up the whole territory of contemporary dance for audiences all across Scotland. She's given access to emerging talent, encouraging young dancers and new choreographers alike.

As Smith prepares to leave SDT to take up a new post, as principal at Northern School of Contemporary Dance in Leeds, she has helped set in motion a symposium that is all about opening doors into the arts, as a profession for disabled people.

Called Pathways to the Profession, it's a two-day event, running at West Park Centre and Dundee Rep on January 19 and 20, and its aim is to challenge the inhibitions and preconceptions that prevent many people with physical and sensory disability from carving out a career in the arts and arts-related professions.

Smith, soft-spoken as ever but with a heavy cold adding huskiness, still delivers her convictions and hopes on these issues with a passionate intensity that hits home, even when her voice is reduced to a whisper. You only have to look at her track record with SDT to recognise that she and the company have done so much more than pay lip service to the cause of integration.

She recalls how, when she became SDT's artistic director, she wanted the company to reach out to as many communities as possible, not only through performing but through teaching. Within months, the door had opened on a medley of new challenges. "We kept getting these letters, from hospitals, day centres, residential homes and schools; all asking if we could do workshops with people who had special needs. And I'd reply that yes, of course, we'd come – that we'd do our best, but that they had to know that we weren't experts." But then, typically, Smith decided her dancers' best could probably be bettered so she asked Adam Benjamin – co-founder of CandoCo Dance Company, one of the first professional integrated companies worldwide – to lead company workshops in the improvisation techniques he used in his own projects and choreographies.

"Adam's way of working is completely inclusive," says Smith. "And because it's based on improvisation, everyone can chip in. It's a brilliant leveller. But then I discovered that we were getting so much more out of this as a company. Real learning experiences: insights into how we integrate with one another as artists and professionals in our own studio. And how interesting and productive, creatively, the whole process of improvisation can be. It was giving us new ways of looking at movement, taking us out of our comfort zone, making us more aware of our bodies and how we use them. And how dancers with disability use theirs, or use their wheelchairs: it was quite a revelation, I think, for our young able-bodied dancers to discover there are certain things you can do with wheels that you can't do on feet."

One outcome of this interaction was a piece, choreographed in early 2007 by Adam Benjamin, called Incidence of Angels in which SDT took to the stage as an integrated dance company. Four professional dancers with disability – three of them wheelchair users – joined forces with the SDT ensemble on a tour that criss-crossed the UK. It was the first time a mainstream contemporary dance company had ever presented audiences with an integrated work as part of a mixed bill. Smith agrees that, for many of those audiences, it was probably the first time they'd actually seen integrated work; what she pinpoints as really important was the calibre of the work. "It met all the criteria you'd expect from a professional dance company," she says. "It was a good piece in its own right."

So too was The Long and the Short of It, a three-minute duet featuring Caroline Bowditch (who is nearing the end of a four-year stint as SDT's Dance Agent for Change) and Tom Pritchard: he, tall and able-bodied, she small – and usually in her wheelchair – sitting side by side in a frisky interplay that Smith rightly says is not about Caroline's fragile-boned disability, it's "about her personality, and how she can wind Tom – and other people – around her little finger. We first did it in a schools' workshop and a PE teacher came up to me afterwards and said he hoped we'd put it in the repertoire, because it was funny and clever and a great piece. So we did. And audiences loved it."

For Smith, the Pathways to the Profession Symposium encapsulates what she and SDT have been putting into practice. Chaired by multi-disciplinary performing artist and writer Mat Fraser, who vividly lives up to his description as "the Jack of all disability performance trades", the high-profile guest speakers from all sectors – education, professional training, arts industry employers and artists – will include Jenny Sealey (artistic director of Graeae Theatre Company and co-artistic director of the Paralympics Opening Ceremony for London 2012), Andrew Dixon (chief executive, Creative Scotland) and Luke Pell of CandoCo.

And while the speakers confront the politics and policies of provision and access, professional disabled artists will, through their own performances, act as positive role models.

It's a bittersweet occasion for Smith: it acknowledges what SDT has achieved under her artistic direction but it marks the opening of the door on her new career in Leeds where she will, of course, ensure issues of integration are carried forward among staff and students. "It's about our humanity, isn't it?" she says. "It's about the world we live in, the shared journey we make – and the arts, and dance, really blossom when you have true creative integration."

Registration for Pathways to the Profession closes today. For details/to book call Joyce Sowden on 01382 342642 or go to the symposium 2012 page on www.scottishdancetheatre.com.