Disability Hate Crime: Naming It, Reporting It, Being Believed

A wide city street with pedestrians on the pavements

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.

One Step From the Pavement: The High Street’s Oldest Excuse

An OPEN sign hanging in a shop doorway

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.

Locked Out Online: Inaccessible Websites and Your Rights

A woman holding a laptop beside a row of servers

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.

The Inaccessible NHS: When Healthcare Itself Is the Barrier

The exterior of a modern hospital building

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.

PIP: Surviving the Assessment and Winning the Appeal

A person working through paperwork with a calculator

Personal Independence Payment is meant to cover the extra costs of disability. In practice the application is a gauntlet: a 40-page form, an assessment that often misdescribes you, and a refusal most people never challenge — even though around seven in ten appeals win.