Before we even reach the opening titles of Then Barbara Met Alan – the BBC’s one-off drama depicting the fight for the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), which aired on Monday night – Barbara has graffitied “piss on pity” on a bus stop and turned down going for a drink with Alan because, in her words, she’d just end up getting drunk and giving him a blowjob. It is an instruction to the audience from the off to reject their preconceptions: this is not disabled people as you might think.

The story of how disabled activists – led by Barbara Lisicki and Alan Holdsworth – used direct action to lobby for the UK’s first disability civil rights law is one you’d be forgiven for not having heard before. Disability history is not taught in schools. It is not dramatised for entertainment and is rarely the subject of documentaries; on…

The government has suffered a humiliating court defeat after it was found to have unlawfully discriminated against thousands of severely disabled people who were left financially worse off after moving on to universal credit.

The court of appeal dismissed a challenge by the Department for Work and Pensions to two previous high court decisions that protected claimants in receipt of severe disability premium against a drop in income under the new benefit.

The cases were brought by two disabled individuals, known as TP and AR, who had sought justice after their benefit income was reduced by £180 a month when they were required to claim universal credit after moving house into a different local authority area.

Responding to Wednesday’s decision, AR said: “We hope that the court of appeal ruling will finally bring an end to our fight for severely disabled people not to be disadvantaged by universal credit. It…

A mother who discovered her disabled daughter’s rapist had moved next door was told she would have repay £10,000 to a council to leave her property.

Leicester City Council said modifications made to her home would incur a fee if the woman left within 10 years of the changes being made.

But the local government watchdog ruled against the council, adding it should apologise.

The council said it was a “complex case” and it had accepted the ruling.

In a report, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGO) detailed that in 2012 Leicester City Council gave the woman a Disabled Facilities Grant of £24,000 for improvements to the home.

But later the woman, who with diagnosed with cancer, found out a man who had raped her disabled daughter had moved next door, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

The LGO said he had “lived away for a long time”…

Benefit-assessment company Capita is going to court to try to reverse the “reputational damage” it says it suffered after a claimant died.

Victoria Smith died months after her personal independence payments were stopped following a Capita assessment.

The outsourcing company was ordered to pay £10,000 in damages over its handling of her disability claim.

It was found to have made incorrect statements but wants the county court verdict set aside and the case reheard.

The company conducts health assessments for personal independence payments (PIP), the main disability benefit, on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions.

While the decision over whether someone receives the benefit is made by a DWP official, Capita’s assessment of how a person’s disability affects their life is a crucial part of the process.

‘She gave up’

A Capita healthcare assistant came to assess Ms Smith in March 2018.

The 33-year-old, from Market Drayton, in…

Frustrated at the lack of complex scientific terms in British Sign Language, a Dundee student has created more than 100 new signs to help deaf people express themselves when talking about science.

For any new student, coming into a lecture theatre or a laboratory can be nerve-wracking – especially if you can’t hear.

That was the reality Liam Mcmulkin faced when he began studying life sciences at the University of Dundee in 2015.

Born deaf, Liam was the first person in his family to go to university, after receiving an undergraduate scholarship from The Robertson Trust.

He admitted having fears about what life as a student would be like, particularly when it came to lectures:

“When I applied to university, I was worried about two things,” he told BBC Scotland’s The Nine.

“Firstly, I was at school with 10 other deaf people but now at university, I was the only…

Can you be lucky if you get something you deserve? I felt lucky last week as I read the letter informing me I’d been awarded personal independence payments (Pip). Like a couple of million other disabled people, for years I’d received Pip’s predecessor, disability living allowance, without any problems in order to pay for the extra costs of my disability – but it was recently reassessed in the name of “welfare reform”.

It’s the oddest of things, “welfare reform”. You sit there, opposite a stranger, asked to detail the sort of intimacies you’d be reluctant to share with a lifelong friend. “Are there parts of your body you can’t reach to wash? Which ones?” “How do you put your bra on?” You wonder why exactly such lines of questioning are necessary, or how the tens of pages you filled out for hours beforehand weren’t enough, and then explain, as…