Disability Pride Month: What Public Transport Reveals About Everyday Ableism

Summary

Throughout, we draw on insights from disability consultant Izzy Watkins, whose writing captures the realities many disabled passengers experience. Understanding these everyday realities helps explain why a single journey can feel like a series of small crises rather than a simple trip.

Disability Pride Month is a celebration of identity, culture, and community, but it’s also a moment to confront the everyday barriers that make life harder than it needs to be. Nowhere is this more visible than on public transport, where disabled people routinely navigate obstacles that non‑disabled passengers rarely notice.

This month, we’re focusing on what public transport reveals about accessibility, ableism, and the emotional labour disabled people carry every day. Throughout, we draw on insights from disability consultant Izzy Watkins, whose writing captures the realities many disabled passengers experience. Understanding these everyday realities helps explain why a single journey can feel like a series of small crises rather than a simple trip.

Access Isn’t Consistent — It’s a Gamble

For non‑disabled passengers, transport is pretty predictable. You tap in, board, sit down, get off.

For disabled passengers, every journey is a question mark:

• Will the lift be working?
• Will the ramp be available?
• Will staff know the procedure?
• Will the wheelchair space be blocked?
• Will assistance actually turn up?

As Izzy Watkins puts it:

“Nearly every time I leave the house, something happens: sometimes it is big, like booked passenger assistance not turning up at a train station. Sometimes it is “smaller”, like a car blocking a dropped kerb, a lack of signage towards step-free routes, or a ramp that has an unsafe gradient.”

When every journey begins with uncertainty, the strain doesn’t just come from the barriers themselves, it comes from having to anticipate them. This forces disabled travellers to plan for problems at every stage, which changes how they travel and how much they can rely on public transport.

Disabled People Wait More — For Everything

Public transport is full of invisible delays that only disabled passengers experience. Izzy captures this reality:

“We live in a world where we are constantly having to wait:

►We are usually the last person to be helped off a train

►We wait for lifts.

►We wait to take longer step-free routes

►We wait while people move bags, bikes or themselves out of wheelchair spaces

►We wait while staff try to find the one person who knows how the access process works

And most of the time, we don’t complain. Not because it’s fine, but because if disabled people complained every single time we encountered an accessibility barrier, complaining would become a full-time job.”

Those repeated waits add up: they make journeys longer, less reliable, and more stressful, and they shape the decisions disabled people make about whether and when to travel at all.

The Emotional Labour of “Tolerance”

Disabled people are often praised for being “so patient”, but that praise hides a truth:

“If we reacted to every single access barrier, we would have no time or energy left for anything else.”

This is the emotional labour of disability — deciding which battles to fight and which barriers to let go. Public transport forces disabled people to constantly calculate:

• Is this worth my energy?
• Will complaining help?
• Will this delay make me miss my connection?
• Do I have the capacity to advocate today?

Non‑disabled people rarely have to think this way. Carrying that constant calculation makes everyday travel emotionally draining. Not only is this constant calculation exhausting, it also leaves many people feeling dismissed when their needs aren’t visible or understood. Even people with hidden disabilities, and those who don’t use wheelchairs, face access barriers. They are often invalidated and accused of “making a fuss”, which is a form of everyday ableism that discourages reporting and makes it harder to resolve problems calmly. That sense of invalidation means small misunderstandings can quickly escalate into conflict, because people are defending their dignity as well as their access.

Misunderstanding Access Needs Creates Conflict

Public transport isn’t just trains. It’s stations, toilets, platforms, signage, and shared spaces.

It’s important to remember that accessible facilities are not exclusive to wheelchair users. They are used by people who need:

• more space
• more time
• pain management
• continence support
• stoma care
• sensory regulation
• medication

When people don’t recognise the wide range of reasons someone might need accessible space or extra time, ordinary interactions can quickly become confrontations. For example, a person who needs longer in an accessible toilet because of pain or medication may be challenged by someone who assumes the facility is “for wheelchairs only”; a wheelchair user waiting for a ramp can be shouted at by a passenger who doesn’t understand why the train can’t depart; a person with a hidden disability who needs a quieter corner on a crowded bus can be accused of “making a fuss.” Those moments are not just awkward, they leave people feeling dismissed, shamed, and less likely to report problems in future. Misunderstanding turns a simple request for accommodation into a test of someone’s dignity, and that escalation creates safety risks as well as emotional harm. Clearer public awareness, calm staff intervention, and a default of respect, giving people the benefit of the doubt and asking rather than accusing, reduce the chance that everyday needs become public disputes.

Access Failures Aren’t “One-Offs” — They’re Patterns

Disabled passengers are frequently told that access failures are rare. But lived experience says otherwise.

Izzy explains:

“This has been happening on the majority of my journeys lately. That’s why I’ve started logging every access failure in a spreadsheet because it helps evidence something disabled passengers are often told is not happening: these are not always isolated incidents.

Sometimes, they are symptoms of wider issues with staffing, resourcing, training, communication, accountability, and how accessibility is managed in day-to-day railway operations.

And when you can show a pattern, it becomes much harder to dismiss.”

When you track failures, patterns emerge:

• understaffing
• inconsistent training
• poor communication between stations
• inaccessible infrastructure
• lack of accountability
• outdated procedures

Recognising these patterns is the first step toward systemic change, but it also raises the question of who is expected to gather the evidence and push for that change.

Reporting Failures Is Its Own Burden

When something goes wrong, disabled passengers are often left with the emotional and administrative burden of reporting it.

Izzy calls this disability admin:

“Disability admin is one of those extra burdens disabled people are expected to carry that non-disabled people often never have to think about. It is tiring, unfair, and unpaid labour. And it often comes after an incident that has already taken enough from you. So I want to be clear: if you do not have the capacity to report every access failure, that is completely understandable. But if you do have the capacity, please consider doing it.

Reporting does not just help you seek accountability for what happened – it can also create the evidence needed to push operators to improve things for future disabled passengers.

And sometimes, it does lead somewhere positive – one example is when I shared accessibility feedback with Caledonian Sleeper. Their response was constructive, open and genuinely proactive: they told me how they would act on the feedback and even invited me to provide further consultancy support.

That is what good complaint handling can look like: listening, learning and changing.

Disabled passengers deserve an equitable travel experience – not one where we have to become investigators, case managers and policy experts just to get from A to B.”

Reporting is demanding. Which is why community tools and clear guidance are essential,  they reduce the extra labour placed on individuals and make it easier to turn experience into evidence.

Practical Tools for Navigating Public Transport Barriers

Public transport is full of situations that non‑disabled people never have to plan for: being refused entry to a bus, being stranded on a train, negotiating shared spaces, or trying to report failures that operators insist “don’t happen”. 

On the Third Seat Consulting resources page, you’ll find a set of lived‑experience tools created specifically to help wheelchair users navigate the realities of UK transport. They exist because the system doesn’t reliably protect disabled passengers, so disabled people have had to protect themselves.

Here are some examples:

Your Rights as a Wheelchair User on a Bus

This guide lays out what the law actually says about wheelchair spaces, boarding, driver responsibilities, and what should happen when the bus is full or the space is occupied. It’s clear, practical, and designed to help wheelchair users assert their rights without having to become legal experts on the spot.

What To Do If You Arrive on a Train and No Ramp Is Provided

One of the most frightening access failures is being stuck on a train because no staff member arrives with a ramp. This guide explains the exact steps to take, who to speak to, how to stay safe, and what to do if staff are unavailable or unresponsive. It’s a resource that shouldn’t need to exist, but it does, because this scenario is still happening across the network.

Navigating Conflict with Buggy Users on a Bus

Wheelchair users are often forced into conflict when buggy users refuse to move from the wheelchair space. This guide offers calm, safety‑focused strategies for handling these moments, including what drivers must do, what passengers are required to do, and how to manage confrontation without escalating it.

How to Report Access Failures During Train Travel

Reporting failures is emotionally draining, but it’s one of the few ways disabled passengers can push for change. This guide breaks down how to report effectively, what information strengthens a complaint, and how to document patterns that operators can’t dismiss as “isolated incidents”.

Accessibility Failures Monitoring Spreadsheet

This spreadsheet helps disabled passengers log repeated failures from missing ramps to broken lifts to inaccessible signage. It turns lived experience into evidence, making it harder for operators to deny systemic issues. It’s simple, powerful, and built for real‑world use.

These resources are practical, action‑focused tools that reduce the burden on individuals and make it easier to hold operators to account. They’re the kind of support that should be provided by transport systems themselves, alongside clear action plans for improving their accessibility systems.

Disability Pride Month: Why Public Transport Must Change

Public transport is a mirror. It shows us:

• how deeply ableism is embedded in everyday systems
• how often access is treated as optional
• how rarely non‑disabled people see the full picture

When disabled people speak up, it’s rarely about a single incident.

“When a disabled person does make a complaint, it is probably not the first access barrier they faced that day.”

This Disability Pride Month, we honour the resilience of disabled people who navigate public transport every day, and we recognise that change cannot fall solely on their shoulders. Non‑disabled passengers have a crucial role to play: speak up when you see barriers, challenge inaccessible practices, and report failures even when they don’t affect you personally. If more people treat access as everyone’s responsibility, public transport will become safer and fairer for everyone. SEND Tutoring will keep sharing lived experience and practical stories about disability, not just during Disability Pride Month, but all year round. We will amplify disabled voices, publish useful guidance, and push for changes that make travel and everyday life genuinely accessible. Listen to disabled people; believe their reports; and if you see a barrier, speak up and report it. Your action helps make public transport accessible for everyone.

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Ella Jones

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