What disabled people in the North East are telling us

Our Access to the Everyday Report 2026, built from conversations with 77 disabled people across the region, found that disrespect is not an occasional experience for disabled people in the North East. It is routine. People told us they are treated as burdens, talked over, dismissed by professionals who should know better, and excluded from the decisions that shape their lives.

At our community events in Stockton-on-Tees, Gateshead, Darlington and Northumberland, the same themes surfaced again and again: workplaces that fail to make adjustments and then blame the disabled person, healthcare professionals who dismiss symptoms or assume incapacity, and public spaces designed as if disabled people simply don't exist. In Hartlepool, disabled people told us plainly: "We want what you've got." The same access to services, respect and opportunity that non-disabled people take for granted.

Read the full picture in What Disabled People in the North East Are Telling Us (2026). The evidence is clear. The case for change is overwhelming.

Naming it: what disablism looks like in the North East

Difference North East was founded on the belief that disabled people's everyday experiences of discrimination must be named and challenged, just as racism, sexism and homophobia are named. We call it disablism: the assumption, embedded in systems, services and attitudes, that disabled people are worth less, need less, deserve less.

It shows up in large and small ways. Our members describe it across every part of life, from the GP surgery to the job interview. If you are new to thinking about disability and rights, our World of Disability hub and our personal guide Navigating Life as a Disabled Person offer an honest, first-person introduction to what it means to enter the world of disability, including the moment you start to understand your rights.

• Being talked over or spoken to as a child when accompanied by a carer or support worker
• Having a job offer withdrawn after disclosing a disability. Read our piece on why recruitment is broken and how accessibility is the answer.
• Receiving a benefit decision letter in language nobody could understand, with a deadline and no support
• A GP who dismisses symptoms, delays diagnosis, or treats the disability rather than the person
• Being stared at, mocked or harassed in a public space
• Services that consult non-disabled people about disabled people's lives, as happened at the Mary Greaves blue plaque unveiling in North Tyneside, where disabled activists were not consulted, not invited, and felt silenced
• Workplaces that treat reasonable adjustments as favours rather than legal duties

The social model: why it changes everything

The foundation of everything Difference North East does is the social model of disability. As our guide What is the Social Model of Disability? explains, the social model separates impairment (how your body or mind works) from disability, which is the barriers society creates and refuses to remove. The problem is not disabled people. The problem is disabling environments and systems.

The social model was developed by disabled activists in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s, growing out of lived experience: people who were excluded not because of their bodies but because of how society was organised. It underpins the legal framework in the Equality Act 2010 and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and it is the lens through which we assess every service, policy and interaction.

One of our members, Debbie Austin, writes about how learning the social model changed her life as a parent and how it gave her the language to challenge the barriers her family faced rather than internalising them as personal failure. This shift, from "what is wrong with me?" to "what is wrong with this system?", is what respect for disabled people looks like in practice.

Your legal rights: the Equality Act 2010

The Equality Act 2010 makes it unlawful to discriminate against disabled people in employment, education, housing, healthcare and the provision of goods and services. Our plain-language guide What Are My Rights as a Disabled Person? sets out these protections clearly, with Easy Read versions. They cover the right to fair treatment, the right to reasonable adjustments, the right to access buildings and services, and the right to complain about discrimination.

Our Reasonable Adjustments resource is a practical guide to what employers and services are required to do. Crucially, it makes clear that there is no requirement for a formal diagnosis. Many people live with undiagnosed impairments and conditions and can self-identify as disabled to request adjustments. Adjustments can include computer software, flexible working, changed communication formats, or physical changes to a workspace.

If you have experienced discrimination and do not know where to start, our step-by-step guide How to Report Disability Discrimination walks through every option, from raising it with the organisation to formal complaints to legal action. We also recommend Disability Rights UK and your local Citizens Advice as starting points for advice.

Disability hate crime in the North East

When disrespect escalates into targeted abuse, harassment or violence, it crosses into disability hate crime, and it is a crime that is dramatically under-reported. In September 2025, Difference North East joined Cleveland Police and Crime Commissioner Matt Storey at a hate crime workshop. As Claire from our team explained, many crimes go unreported because disabled people do not believe they will be taken seriously. That belief is often rooted in experience. The strategy work we did with Cleveland Police is a direct response to that gap. Better awareness, better training, and disabled people involved in shaping the response. That is what is needed across every police force in the region.

There is a longer history here too. Our piece on disability pride, policing and activism reflects on the complex relationship between disabled people and the police, and on the activism that has always pushed for accountability. Disability rights have never been given freely. They have been demanded.

Being respected at work and in governance

The workplace is one of the most common sites of disablism in the North East. Our report documented employers who treat reasonable adjustments as exceptional burdens, recruitment processes that screen out disabled candidates before interview, and workplaces that expect disabled people to fit the system rather than the system fitting them. Our blog Recruitment is Broken: Accessibility is the Answer sets out what genuinely inclusive recruitment looks like and challenges employers to move beyond minimum legal compliance towards real culture change.

Respect also means disabled people having power, not just representation. Our work on disability inclusion in governance argues for disabled people at board and leadership level, not tokenistically, but with decision-making authority. As we know from the Mary Greaves commemoration, it is possible to celebrate disability history while simultaneously excluding the disabled people who should be at its centre. That is not respect. That is performance.

If your organisation wants to understand and improve its approach, our disability equality training and accessibility consultancy services are led by disabled people with lived experience of these exact dynamics.

Disabled people's human rights are routinely denied, through degrading treatment in care settings, questioning of our capacity to make decisions about ourselves, and stigma and opposition to us having sex, relationships and families. Difference North East, on disability rights and human rights

What we are campaigning for

Based on our 2026 Access to the Everyday Report, our community events across Stockton, Gateshead, Darlington and Northumberland, and years of listening to disabled people across the region, Difference North East is calling on public bodies, employers, health services and communities to:

1. Name disablism with the same urgency as other forms of discrimination, in public spaces, media, workplaces and policy. Silence is not neutrality. It is complicity.
2. Adopt the social model of disability as the operating framework for all services. Read What is the Social Model? and share it with your team.
3. Make reasonable adjustments a default, not a negotiation. Use our Reasonable Adjustments resource to understand your legal duty.
4. Involve disabled people in co-designing services from the start. Not consulted, not invited, silenced: as described at the Mary Greaves commemoration, this is not an acceptable standard for any organisation.
5. Take disability hate crime seriously: properly record it, properly investigate it, and involve disabled people in shaping the response, as we are doing with Cleveland Police and Crime Commissioner.
6. Build disabled people into leadership and governance, not just consultation panels. Our governance work sets out what meaningful inclusion looks like.

Frequently asked questions