Access Matters is run by a small campaigning team from Yorkshire. People use our guides to make real decisions: whether to appeal a benefit decision, what to say to a station manager, whether a venue broke the law. So how we write them matters, and you should be able to see it.
Where our facts come from
- The law itself: the Equality Act 2010, the Care Act 2014 and the regulations under them, read from legislation.gov.uk rather than from summaries of summaries.
- Official guidance and rules: GOV.UK, the NHS, the Office of Rail and Road, regulators and ombudsmen.
- Published data: our Step-Free Station Map is built from Transport for London’s measured station data, National Rail Enquiries’ station records and OpenStreetMap. The figures on this site come from those datasets, and we change our headline numbers when the data changes.
- Specialist organisations such as Citizens Advice, Scope, Carers UK and condition-specific charities, which we name so that you can go to them directly.
How our guides are written
We use AI tools to help research and draft some of our guides. We build every guide around the primary sources above and name the laws, schemes and organisations involved in the text, so that you can check them yourself. Rates, thresholds and deadlines change, so we tell you to check current figures and give you the official route to do so.
Our voice is campaigning: we think most access barriers are choices that someone could have made differently, and we say so. But we keep opinion and fact separate. When we say the law requires something, it does. When we are arguing for something, we make that clear.
What our guides are not
Our guides are general information, not legal or financial advice about your particular situation. For free, independent advice about discrimination, call the Equality Advisory & Support Service on 0808 800 0082. For benefits, Citizens Advice and local welfare rights services give free advice tailored to your case.
Corrections
If something we have written is wrong or out of date, email info@accessmattersltd.co.uk. We fix confirmed errors promptly and update the “reviewed” date shown at the top of the guide.
Independence
We do not accept payment to cover or leave out any business, venue or transport operator. Reports on our Access Map stay public whether or not the business involved likes them, and businesses can reply openly on the same page. If this site carries advertising, adverts are chosen by the ad network and do not influence what we write.