By Kasia Kostoń

During the entirety of the 20 years that I grew up and studied in this smallish English town, one plot of land on a main road was perpetually empty. It wasn’t until I moved away for University and occasionally came back to visit family that I saw that finally, probably over 20 years after the demolition of the previous building, something was being built. But given how unnatural it would be for this main road to have just houses or apartments that would be otherwise surrounded by shops, and given how infrequently anything changed in this 200 year old town, the addition of three mysterious businesses was equally exciting for small-business owners in the area, the unemployed who had new opportunities for work, and any other average resident wagging their tail at the introduction of something new. After two years of patient waiting, on Easter weekend, the shops and hairdresser were due to have their triumphant new opening. It was an exciting time for everyone in town, but not me. Because I wasn’t welcome.

The best way I could describe being disabled in England, would be like being in a toxic, emotionally and mentally abusive relationship: but with the entire country. But instead of having one entity, one person or partner, it’s the world around you that constantly reminds you that you’re not valued, your contributions aren’t important, you aren’t worthy of what everyone else naturally deserves. These reminders are everywhere you look. It’s written in the important buildings you can’t enter, the broken lifts with no alternative routes, the disabled bathrooms that are used as storage cupboards. They’re like billboards scattered around you with your daily affirmations that you, specifically, are not welcome. Not here, not anywhere.

Real life frequently accurately reflects the media in this case, where an occasional disabled character may be allowed to sit at the table with the cool kids, or may appear in the Christmas or Thanksgiving special, but ultimately they exist to only be included when it’s convinient to the plot. They may be included in the polaroid pictures stuck to the basement fridge, but are they in the basement sleepover? They may be on the protagonist’s lockscreen, but are they in the final quest?

Reality in England feels the same way. Disabled people are only included when it is cheap, efficient, and easy to include them. You can watch the plot changing events, but you are forced to accept that you are not a part of the story, and merely an extra in the lives of the main characters, who matter. This message is embedded in the sudden flexibility of basic human rights when they involve a disabled person. For main characters, basic human rights such as eating, be it in a restaurant or McDonalds alike, or using the bathroom, or taking money out of your own bank account that you, as an adult open, and that you as an adult earn money into, are all basic human rights. The exclusion of any able-bodied person out of any of these activities causes outrage and lawsuits of various discriminatory violations. But feel free to hop on Google Maps and “walk” around London, and see how many of these necessary-to-life institutions have a staircase to enter. Regardless of whether the building is a Victorian-era ex-church turned HSBC Bank, or a series of shops freshly built in your home town earlier this year, it’s unlikely to include an enterance that welcomes the disabled.

One thing you need to know about England, is that nostalgia and the blurry memories of a better time are a key motivator in most decisions. While it’s understandable that cathedrals built a thousand years ago didn’t prioritise accessibility, freshly built shops and hairdressers in 2026 were still built with stairs to enter, paying the price of a difficult enterance for the disabled, wheelchair users, mothers with pushchairs, or the elderly, in exchange for a more classic-feeling British building. Nothing is as important to the British public as the status-quo.

The UK railservice LNER is not the first train line to design ‘new and improved’ trains, that can go faster than before, use a more economic battery power, have a new fresher interior than before, but still feature a 20cm+ step to enter the train. Further establishing the need for ramps, further establishing the reliance on others, further eliminating independence from the disabled. Exclusion is the price to pay in exchange for the tradition of stepping up onto a train. But if it ain’t broke, why fix it?

Except, it doesn’t work. I confidently write from first hand experience that rail road accessibility services only works about 30% of the time. That’s how often I can be confident that I will be able to get on and off the train I paid for.

Despite the mantra of ‘Turn up and Go’ in British railservices, you’ll find that most of the time regardless of whether you prebook assistance or indeed, turn up without prior warning, they are usually equally surprised to see you. Even if the Turn Up and Go was accurate, as I always try to explain in frustration to railservice workers, getting on a train will never be as important as getting off. If I never get on a train I paid for, I will be left very upset, far from my destination, and scammed out of money. If I never get off a train I paid for, I will be left very upset, far from my destination, and scammed out of my money, but in Scotland.

A Reddit threat I recently stumbled upon in r/disabled, followed the community of disabled people in England who have had similar negative experiences with public transport, and most of them, despite their varying assistance needs, all shared one thing in common: defeat. All comments shared the same melancholy sense of defeat, that regardless of whether you book assistance or test the Turn Up and Go slogan, regardless of whether you need a ramp or help with your bags, regardless of whether you show up five minutes before your train or fourty, you are unlikely to be without issues. Most commenters also shared their frustrations that when things do go wrong, as ‘human error’ promises, filing complaints is beyond useless. A common theme amongst the Reddit users who still had it in them to file complaints (I lost that a long time ago), is that even when you do attempt to be heard, you are quickly shut down with a short list of brickwall excuses. That you have no right to complain if you didn’t prebook assistance (why plaster that slogan around, then?), that you have to have sufficient evidence to prove anything went wrong, and in one commenters case, that their complaint will be dismissed since they cannot accurately describe which station they were wrongly stranded at. As a visually impaired person.

The truth is, that railservices must deal with so many complaints, that filing them really feels without purpose. At this point, it’s hard for me to believe they don’t know what the issues are; they just don’t care.

Lastly, comes the issue of healthcare.

If you utter the letters AJM to any wheelchair user in England, it’s unlikely that you won’t be met with a scoff or eyeroll. AJM Healthcare is the main wheelchair service that not only provides custom wheelchairs funded by the NHS but also claims to be the first point of contact in repairing them.

Here’s my personal experience with AJM, the good, the bad, and the ugly (don’t hold your breath for good, though). This is a story that spans six years, however it’s frustratingly repetitive and frustratingly easy to tell.
Once upon a time, the two front wheels of my wheelchair became so worn down they were unusable. I called AJM, and told them I needed new front wheels, but they ordered new tires for my big wheels. The difference here is small vs big wheels, but I understand this sounds like reasonable human error over the phone. Though within the wheelchair world, castors and wheels mean two different things, it is within the realm of human errors. And I would forgive it. Except two years later, it happened again. I called with broken front wheels (castors). They schedule a day to come and repair them for me. They don’t show up. They schedule another day. They don’t show up. When on the third scheduled day of me sitting around and waiting, they do show up, they bring tires for my big wheels. The third time around when my front wheels get worn down, I call them and explain exactly what I need, what size I need, which wheels I need replacing, what to order, and even what not to order. And when they came to my house with tires for the third time, I broke down crying.

Each time that they make an oopsie, each time they need to order what I actually need months after I report it, it adds an extra three or so months to my wait. Every two years, the exact same supposed ‘human error’ stops my life dead in its tracks, and for months at a time, I am house bound. I can’t freely move around the kitchen, can’t freely use the shower, can’t trust that my mobility device won’t topple underneath my weight.
At what point would you personally, learn what the difference between a big and small wheel is? At what point would you begin to truly crash out? Because for me, it was the third time. After dealing with the exact same issue in 2022, 2024, and 2026, I realised that this biannual quarantine of me waiting for the NHS to fix oopsies has a significantly bigger toll on me that it does on them. That’s when I began to believe that their incompetence wasn’t a human error anymore. There was a miscommunication somewhere, there as a systematic error being made at some point that allowed this to continue happening on a biannual basis.

However, there was nothing that I could personally do anymore, as with the third complaint, the outcome letter I received called the ordering of the tires ‘human error’.

And maybe this is the part that hurts the most. Because when nobody comes to help you get off the train, leaving you stranded for miles, you have to forgive, because it’s human error to forget something. When someone, three times in a row, misorders something, mishears it over the phone, you have to forgive, because it’s human error to make silly mistakes.

But when you show up three minutes before your train? Because of traffic, or because the lifts were out of order, or simply because you took a little longer than expected to get ready, why can’t anyone forgive you? Why does that mean you haven’t earned the right to board a train anymore, because you didn’t show up ten minutes before? Why is it that even if ordering something you need is someone else’s responsibility, you will still be blamed for having a little attitude over the phone? Why aren’t you granted any human error?

Why is it that disabled people have to be unequivocally perfect, to earn the same leeway as able-bodied people are naturally granted? When able-bodied people make mistakes that affect others, they’re forgivable, but when disabled people make mistakes, they are never human error. Because we aren’t considered human.

Because frankly, though the chronic pain and hardship associated with having a disability makes occasional appearances, being treated like a disabled person is what ruins your life. There is no easy way to heal nor forgive, but no way to escape or improve either. It’s a never ending cycle of forcing down frustrations because the entity you’re mad at isn’t stationary; constant unresolved complaints that companies ignore; swallowing down forgiveness even when it comes back up. This inescapable toxicity never stops moving forward in a constant motion like a high speed train, and I’d love to get off. But I can’t.

Photo by ExploreWithTunde via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

About the Author:

I’m Kasia Kostoń, a writer most interested in exploring the lesser discussed aspects of the human experience, as a minority, as a woman, and simply as a person. My key interests include linguistics, movies, astrology, and storytelling.

Substack: @kazako