Where we come from
Transport for All’s history is steeped in the protest and punk rock movements of the 1980s, with the now-infamous scenes of wheelchair users chaining themselves to buses. We hold this spirit of justice at the centre of our work.
Today we’re 40 years on from the founding of Transport for All, and almost 30 years on from the Disability Discrimination Act. Yet disabled people still experience inequity and discrimination on a vast scale.
Our first Accessible Transport Survey (2023) showed this starkly. It found 56% of respondents reported being unhappy or extremely unhappy making journeys, and 96% of respondents had faced one or more barriers to walking and wheeling on recent journeys. Importantly, it also found that removing access barriers could almost double the number of journeys disabled people make.
This can’t go on. That’s why our ambitious vision is to see transport justice for all disabled people, led by disabled people.
Where we're going
This strategy sets out our goals for our work over the next five years. To develop it we combined the experiences of members and the wider community with the findings of our recent Accessible Transport Survey, and considered the context across the transport sector.
We are a small, proud, Disabled People’s Organisation: the majority of our staff team and Board of Trustees are disabled. We work with our members, the wider community of disabled people, and stakeholders, to raise our voices and achieve as much as we can together.
Delivering our goals
We will work to achieve transport justice in five priority areas.
Where every disabled person has the tools and resources we need to travel.
This requires disabled people having the tools and resources needed to plan and make journeys, to challenge instances when access is denied, and to lead change.
To deliver this, we will:
- Inform: provide accurate, up to date and accessible information relating to rights to concessions, transport, and related benefits
- Challenge: provide the highest quality disabled-led regional casework service and develop more campaigning resources
Where our community is at the heart of decision making, compelling power holders to deliver accessible transport and streets.
This requires disabled people’s lived experiences informing decision making and policy nationally and locally, and decision makers across Governments, local authorities, and industry taking action to remove barriers for disabled people in order to deliver fully accessible transport and streets.
To deliver this, we will:
- Influence: Hold power holders to account by monitoring actions and speaking up when policies or progress aren’t delivered
- Campaign: Build a strong and connected national movement through creative campaigning
Where our lived experience is meaningfully embedded, appropriately compensated, and responded to in the transport sector and beyond.
This requires decision makers across Governments, industry, and local authorities to have the knowledge, skills and confidence to meaningfully engage with disabled people, taking a pan-impairment approach.
To deliver this, we will:
- Research: Build a robust evidence base of solutions to access barriers, based on disabled-led research and insights from our community
- Advise: Deliver high quality, co-produced, disabled-led training and consultancy to the transport sector and associated sectors
Where our voices are amplified, and our message is heard and acted upon.
This requires our movement to grow so that disabled people’s lived experiences will be heard by society in our own words.
To deliver this, we will:
- Communicate: Influence the public through digital and traditional media
- Connect: deliver membership networks and peer support for all disabled people
Where our organisational practices fully reflect our commitment to our vision.
This requires Transport for All to have a diverse and inclusive team, good governance, a sustainable future, and strong processes.
To deliver this, we will:
- Be a proud DPO: Maintain our DPO status and provide a supportive culture for our team, with a focus on learning and flexibility
- Govern well: Achieve and maintain a high level of governance and transparency
- Grow sustainably: Achieve financial stability through diverse funding sources
- Improve processes: Take a data-driven approach to improving our processes across the organisation
The evidence from our community is clear. 40 years on from the founding of Transport for All, and almost 30 years on from the Disability Discrimination Act, disabled people still experience inequity and discrimination. This can’t go on.
This plan is our response, and our roadmap towards our vision of transport justice for disabled people.
