Failures in disability access are not caused by a lack of goodwill, but by a failure to follow through, according to author and disability rights academic Sir Thomas William Shakespeare.
British sociologist, Shakespeare, who researches disability and bioethics, said disabled people are routinely excluded not through malice, but through systems that promise inclusion and then quietly fail to deliver it.
“There is a problem with failing,” he told The Anton Savage Show
“They talk the talk, but they do not walk the walk. They say, ‘we’ll arrange this, we’ll arrange that’, but they don’t.”
He told listeners that breakdowns in basic accessibility remain common across public transport, venues and cultural spaces.
“Disabled people get stuck on buses or trams or trains or planes,” he said.
“They can’t access the building because it doesn’t work and nobody’s thought of it.”
One incident he described involved attending a live performance with a hard-of-hearing companion who relied on hearing aids and an induction loop.
“Of course, the loop did not work,” Shakespeare said.
“I was hearing the ghost stories and she was not.”
When the pair complained, the response only compounded the problem.
“We were basically told, ‘you’re holding everybody else up’,” he said.
“I did not think that was appropriate.”
Shakespeare argued that such moments reveal a deeper issue in how disability is treated, as an afterthought rather than a core part of planning.
A woman caring about elderly woman with a disability at home. Image: Dmitriy Shironosov / Alamy Stock Photo“People are very good at saying the right things,” he said, “but the practical side is where it falls apart.”
He suggested that genuine inclusion requires disabled people to be involved from the outset, rather than being accommodated later, if at all.
“Nobody has thought it through,” he said, pointing to accessibility features that exist on paper but fail in real-world use.
Shakespeare emphasised that until access works consistently in practice, equality remains mainly theoretical.
