I’m disabled and struggle to walk – I get so much hostility, I hide at home

Victoria Massey doesn’t like to leave her house much any more. She has lived with cerebral palsy since she was born, but in the past two years she has noticed a growing hostility whenever she ventures outside. “I was at work the other week, and I walked into a sandwich shop, and a grown adult man was laughing at me walking in,” she says. Victoria, who uses a wheelchair, prides herself on having developed thick skin in her 41 years. She has grown used to the heckles, and tries her best to ignore the parents who pull their children away from her as she passes. “When you’re shooing your children away, it’s almost like it’s something I should be ashamed of,” she says. But since March 2025, when the government turned its attention turned to reform of personal independence payment (PIP) – the benefit for those with long-term physical or mental health conditions or disability– she has avoided the supermarket. Shorts “A month ago, my mum had put my blue badge in the car window. When we got to the disabled parking spot, there was a man by the car, tutting at us,” she says. At first, he accused Victoria’s mother of not being disabled. When Victoria got out of the car with a visible disability, she felt pressured to demonstrate to him that she couldn’t walk easily. “He said to us, ‘Yeah, but she could be putting that on.” On another occasion, an older woman stood blocking their disabled parking space. The older woman said she was saving it for her husband and that Victoria and her mother didn’t look disabled enough for the spot. “She said, ‘I’m more disabled, I’ve got a heart condition.’ She then followed us around the supermarket, calling me a ‘nasty girl’.” Increasingly, disabled people are reporting rising hostility among the public, with people using anti-benefit rhetoric, accusing blue badge holders of faking their disability, or claiming their targets are stealing from taxpayers. Recent research by the MS Society suggests that 22 per cent of people with multiple sclerosis had been questioned by the public for using a blue badge, with many reporting being shouted at and even spat at. “These days, if I’m on my own, I feel more vulnerable, says Victoria. “I hate confrontation. With that older lady, I was just shaking. I don’t like putting myself into situations where confrontation could happen, so nine times out of 10 I just don’t want to go out.” She struggles to go on social media for fear of seeing the same vitriol. “There is so much hatred going around. It’s worse than it was in the 80s when I was growing up. Back then, people wanted to help more.” It’s not difficult to find the sort of content that Victoria means. “Disabled people should still work,” says one TikToker in a video. “If you have epilepsy or if you’re in a wheelchair, I don’t care, you should still work.” Then there are the countless videos condemning “luxury” motability cars. “Disabled people do work,” says Victoria, who works part-time in customer service. “Since the government started talking about making changes to PIP, and about how the points need to be reassessed, people think that disabled people are all getting Range Rovers. I can’t drive any more, so my parents are drive my car only when I need to get somewhere. We have to have a biggish car to fit my walking aid, a wheelchair, and everything else you need to get me out and about. You couldn’t fit that in a Ford Focus.” ‘People think that disabled people are all getting Range Rovers,’ says Victoria (Photo: Victoria Massey) The official statistics say that hate crime against disabled people is actually decreasing – police stats from 2025 show an eight per cent fall from the previous year. The Home Office notes this may partly reflect shifts in police IT and crime-recording systems, rather than a real decrease in abuse. And despite recent annual drops, recorded figures remain significantly higher than a decade ago. Charities also warn the figures aren’t painting the full picture. “Last year, fewer than 300 cases were taken forward by prosecutors, despite police forces in England and Wales recording more than 10,000 offences,” says Bethany Bale, policy manager at Disability Rights UK. “Increasingly divisive politics, and media narratives that attack marginalised people, lead to the normalisation of abuse. “Our co-produced research, Journey to Safety, highlighted that disability hate crimes remain severely underreported, with only 29.9 per cent of those surveyed reporting incidents. Disabled people told us that to rebuild trust they want people to have better disability awareness training, and to get tailored support when they report crimes, right from the beginning through to prosecution and rehabilitation of perpetrators.” Broadcaster and activist Mik Scarlet, 61, has experienced this growing hostility in various ways; from outright violence (in 2003, a group of teenagers broke into his home) to the less tangible. “When I was young, if all of my friends went somewhere and I couldn’t get in, no one went in. My friends would turn around and go home. Now, with whoever I go out with, I tend to get left outside a lot more. That says something about how society has changed.” Mik, a wheelchair user based in London, was an activist in the 80s and 90s and helped introduce the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, which made accessibility and access to work a legal right. When he was a child, he often couldn’t access cinemas or theatres, and would have to go negotiate stairs at gigs and nightclubs by lowering himself down step by step. Yet, he, too, feels he faces more animosity in 2026. “I experienced less discrimination in the 80s than I do now,” he says. ‘I experienced less discrimination in the 80s than I do now,’ says broadcaster and activist Mik Scarlet (Photo: Mik Scarlet) Mik’s local pub has recently been refurbished. “It’s just opened their beer garden again, and they’ve taken out all the stuff that made it accessible. It’s less accessible now than it has been for decades.” In August, Mik, who is now a campaigner and spokesperson for NDMAC.org, was forced to leave a local festival because of a lack of accessible toilets. He told the Islington Tribune: “The accessible Portaloos were locked, and the only pub nearby had a step up. So as far as I could see, they didn’t have a toilet, and I was forced to go home early.” Surveys by Disability Rights UK indicate that more than 80 per cent of disabled respondents face serious local street accessibility issues, while the National Centre for Accessible Transport (NCAT) found 92 per cent of disabled people have experienced direct difficulties using the transport network. Concerts and live events are even more hazardous: 68 per cent of disabled people feel that UK venues simply are not equipped to handle their physical requirements, while 46 per cent reported feeling explicitly unwelcome due to poor infrastructure or untrained staff. “One of the things I think that it’s quite hard to explain to younger disabled people is that we fought very hard not to be pitied,” he says. “But part of what goes with pity is an understanding from the public that you’re having it rough. When I was growing up, I never had anyone go, ‘It’s alright for you and your free car.’ No one ever said it, because they knew you needed it. I think what we’ve done now is we’ve argued so well that our lives aren’t shit, that people are now going, ‘Well, why should you be able to park there?’ “I feel so sorry for younger disabled people now. They are trying to argue we deserve equality, while also saying we need support. And it’s a very fine line to tread. Now everyone thinks everything’s accessible, but we’re still getting all this money. “The public are asking, Why are you getting all this money? Why don’t you get on a bus?” says Mik. “Well, not all buses are accessible. And the trains are crap, and don’t talk about the Underground system. There’s a lack of understanding about how things haven’t improved.” He marvels at how quickly the world has closed its doors. “We’ve got a new young generation of disabled people that are coming along, and they believe everything was obviously worse in the past,” he says. “They don’t know that actually, even just five years ago, it was better.”