Difference was set up by a group of like-minded disabled people in the North East of England in 2017.
We felt that the North East needed a voice for disabled people because, other than local organisations, there was no strong regional representation.
We thought we’d start our work by gathering people’s day to day experiences of being disabled. Like everyday sexism, homophobia or racism, we need to start calling out the everyday disablism we experience. This website is all about that, gathering evidence to affect change.
Does this sound familiar …
You’re left on a train when everyone else has got off because they forgot to get a ramp out.
You can’t get a table at a restaurant because the owner thinks you’ll put the other diners off their food.
You wet yourself because there’s no accessible toilet.
You can’t go to a concert or share an experience because there’s no access or hearing provision.
You can’t get on a bus or an underground because there’s no room.
You can’t go out with your mates because you get abused by drunken people all night.
You get stared at and whispered about.
Disabled people experience these things all the time but we just live with them. Not anymore. Together we can make a Difference!
We are from the North East and we want to represent disabled people in our region. We know the issues we experience will be common to disabled people all across the UK, so please do log your experiences (the website can geolocate your entries). It is early days and all new, so we will see where this takes us! So please don’t be put off if you live somewhere else.
These are the people behind Difference, and we couldn’t do our work without help and support from our funders.
Our work
You can read about the work we’ve been doing with Disabled people in the North East in our National Lottery funded project ‘Delivering Difference’ since 2021, here: