Plain-English, practical and UK-specific: your rights, the scripts, the template letters and the escalation routes.
Combined sight and hearing loss is not deafness plus blindness — it is its own disability, and the law treats it that way: councils must assess deafblind people using someone specifically trained to do it. Most families are never told. Here is what to ask for, by name.
Being removed from a cinema, challenged by security or reported to the police for tics you cannot control is disability discrimination — and it happens to people with Tourette’s constantly. Here is the law, and the cards, cues and scripts that make going out easier.
After a dozen stays, a rare 9/10: step-free from the Elizabeth line to your room, four lifts a floor, proper wet rooms — and the two things it still gets wrong.
A departure board tells you a time. A live map tells you the truth: where your train actually is, right now, and which platform it is heading for. For disabled passengers, that difference is not a gadget — it is the number of minutes you spend standing on a cold platform.
A private landlord cannot lawfully say “no adjustments, no assistance dog, no benefits tenants” — but plenty still do. What the Equality Act requires of landlords, what the Renters’ Rights Act changes, and how to get adaptations into a home you don’t own.
Polling stations up steps, ballot papers you cannot read, and a long history of disabled people being helped to vote by other people’s choices. The rules changed in 2022 — mostly for the better — and here is what you can now insist on.
The system for supporting disabled children at school runs on deadlines most parents are never told and refusals most parents never challenge — even though appeals succeed in the overwhelming majority of cases. Here is the process, the deadlines, and where the pressure points are.
When your equipment runs on electricity, a power cut is a medical event and the unit price is a health tax. The Priority Services Register, the 105 line, and the discounts most eligible households never claim.
The slur from a passing car, the “joke” that follows you down the aisle, the neighbour who makes the street feel unsafe, the online pile-on. Much of it is criminal, most of it is never reported, and the reporting routes are wider than people think.
A single step excludes a wheelchair user as completely as a locked door — and a portable ramp costs less than a till. Twenty-five years after the law changed, the step is still there. Here is what the law actually requires of shops, and how to move the ones that will not budge.
Everything moved online — booking, banking, benefits, parking. So when a website cannot be used with a screen reader or a keyboard, that is not a technical niggle: it is a locked door. The law covers this, and hardly anyone uses it.
Fixed-height examination tables, letters you cannot read, phone-only booking, and symptoms dismissed as “part of your disability”. The NHS has legal duties most patients have never been told about — including the Accessible Information Standard.