Originally published here.

How other people think about and act towards us can have a huge impact on how we view ourselves and our role in society. An occasional moment of rudeness or being ignored may be a minor inconvenience or annoyance. But the more it happens, the more the impact adds up. And what if the negative attitudes and behaviours you experienced were not recognised by large numbers of people around you as being a problem? Despite progress made over the last two decades, this is still the case for disabled people in Britain today. It’s what we’ve identified in this report as the disability perception gap: the difference between the attitudes of non-disabled people and the reality of disabled people’s experiences. For disabled people, being able to do the things you want to do, and being seen as more than your condition or impairment is crucial to being able to live the life you choose. Having a sense of self-worth and a purpose in life is fundamental to that – being able to work, socialise and travel as you would like, without encountering abuse, discrimination, or disregard.

A lack of understanding of disability and negative attitudes towards disabled people is still far too common in our society, and present one of the most significant barriers to disabled people living the lives they choose. Attitudes and prejudicial behaviour can take a variety of forms. Whether you don’t get a job because the manager thinks you’d be less productive than a non-disabled person, or you don’t want to use public transport because of other passengers’ comments and behaviour, prejudice can play a tangible role in reducing disabled people’s everyday quality of life. The time for concerted action is long overdue.

About this research Scope has undertaken this review to examine the prejudice that disabled people face every day, and to better understand the public’s attitude towards disabled people. While we have seen decided progress over recent years as negative attitudes become rarer, this report shows that there is still some way to go. Alongside headline figures, we have considered which factors might drive negative attitudes and prejudice against disabled people, and what this means for any attempts to tackle negative views.

This report draws on data from different sources. The survey data comes from a set of questions Scope funded on the 2017 British Social Attitudes survey (BSA survey), which we then analysed. The BSA survey’s ‘gold standard’ sampling method, sample size and long history allow us to make robust population-level estimates of current and historical attitudes towards disability. These results are reinforced with the results from our ethnographic research, and the experiences that disabled people have shared with Scope.

Negative attitudes towards disabled people are still far too common in our society. Disabled people have told us that these negative attitudes represent one of the most significant barriers to them living the life they choose. Shifting these attitudes should therefore be at the centre of any programme designed to ensure equality for disabled people. There is no silver bullet that will address this issue. Instead, it requires a concerted effort across society to tackle prejudice and negative attitudes towards disabled people.

This should include a variety of spaces, from the classroom to the boardroom, and all points in between. There needs to be a coherent approach to improving attitudes across all areas of life. We feel that there is a role for all sectors of public life to challenge negative attitudes towards disability. That is why we are calling on the government to launch a crossdepartmental disability strategy, building on the ‘Fulfilling Potential’ programme which ended in 2015. This should be an ambitious roadmap to improve the lives of disabled people in all areas affected by government decision-making. It should work in partnership with disabled people, businesses and the third sector, with the ambition to reduce the prejudice that disabled people face every day.

Just as we cannot expect any one sector to achieve this transformation alone, we cannot assume government action is sufficient to transform the status quo by itself.

Key to improving attitudes will be increasing people’s understanding of what it means to be disabled, and the challenges that disabled people face on a daily basis. In short, by developing understanding we can begin to build empathy and subsequently shifts in attitudes.

With one in three (36%) BSA survey respondents saying that they do not know any disabled people, this requires significant changes. We believe that one of the most effective places to start is in increasing disabled people’s presence in the workplace. The employment rate for disabled people currently stands at more than 30 percentage points below that of non-disabled people. However, the survey results show us that having a disabled colleague means you are half as likely as someone without a disabled colleague to think of disabled people as getting in the way.

Scope’s Work with Me campaign, in partnership with Virgin Media, is one way in which we are trying to play our part in tackling this view of disabled people’s ability to get into and stay in work. But, as our campaign highlights, much more action is needed by government and employers to achieve the government’s ambition of getting a million more disabled people into work.

As well as personal contact, it has been suggested that attitudes towards some population groups are affected by the way that they are represented in the media. In the UK, disabled people are systematically under-represented on television. In 2016/17, disabled people accounted for 6.5 percent of on- screen contributions. However, it is thought that less than 3 percent on on-screen contributions are made by somebody the audience would perceive as disabled. This suggests that even where disabled people are present on screen, they are often in effect ‘acting’ non-disabled.

This does not go unnoticed, with Scope research finding that more than 80 percent of disabled people do not feel they are properly represented on screen. Reforming the media industries so that disabled people are equally represented and equally visible would help raise awareness among people who otherwise might have no known contact with disabled people. Improving representation in the media is just one way of increasing the visibility of disabled people, and fields such as politics must also do more. Schemes exist to improve disabled representation, such as Project Diamond operating across the television sector and the BBC’s Class Act project. What is needed for further progress is for schemes such as these to be better supported, scaled up, and rolled out across the full range of mainstream media. The recent Creative Industries sector deal announced as part of the Industrial Strategy includes £2m to fund a creative careers programme, designed to reach 600,000 young people in two years. This is a positive move, but increasing diversity needs to be an explicit aim of any such programme. Other schemes, such as the BFI’s Lottery-funded Future Film Skills Programme should share this focus on diversity.

You can read the complete report here.