The Friendly Times

I keep seeing articles about the “untapped talent” of disabled people. The phrase pops up with the reliability of a well-worn sitcom rerun. It’s meant warmly, I know. But after thirty-plus years in this field, I can’t help feeling a familiar mix of frustration and quiet amusement. Because if this really were a new idea, I must have dreamt most of the 1990s. The Numbers Haven’t Moved Much  Here’s the reality. In 2024, just over  half  of working-age disabled people in the UK were in work. For non-disabled people, it was over  four-fifths . The gap sits around  28 percentage points  and has done so, more or less, for decades. If this were a graph stuck to a fridge, someone would tap it and say, “Is it supposed to do anything?” Talent Isn’t the Problem People sometimes ask why progress is so slow. The simplest answer? If talent were the issue, we’d have cracked it when dial-up internet was still a thing. Disabled people aren’t sitting in the dark waiting to be...

  Ever tried using a parcel return point from a wheelchair? I did recently — or rather, I  tried  to. What followed was a lesson in how clever ideas can become barriers when inclusion isn’t part of the plan. At my local Morrisons, there’s a shiny new self-service parcel drop-off point tucked away at the back of the garage forecourt. There’s no dedicated parking for it, so the only option is to stop in the forecourt itself. The service road leading to the supermarket is on a bend, and pulling up there would be far too risky. From the forecourt, there are no dropped kerbs, so you first have to brave a busy service road. Then comes a raised kerb and a stretch of loose grey shale before you even reach the machine. And even if you get that far, the scanner and parcel boxes are mounted so high they’re out of reach. And then there’s the unspoken assumption: that wheelchair users always have someone with them. That we never go anywhere alone. In reality, many of us are perfectly ...