Background: Unpredictability, the risk of harm and possibility of rewards, are integral elements of encounter. Risk literature offers insight on the complex ways in which risk perceptions and attunements shape behaviours and interactions in encounter between people with and without intellectual disability.

Method: The paper draws on risk literature, encounter literature, and examples from the authors’ previously published studies on encounter and work integrated social enterprises.

Results: Encounters between people with and without intellectual disability are shaped by perceptions of possible rewards and harms skills and experience in attunement to risk signals; disposition towards, and strategies of, risk aversion, management or enablement and environmental attributes of encounter settings.

Conclusions: There is a need to shift community and disability services’ understanding of risk in encounter, by developing a positive appreciation of encounter risk, and development of risk enablement strategies that are learned through experiential practice.