Disabled People Want to Stay Cool

A collage-style artwork showing a painted path leading to the ocean, a paper sun, blue-green-and-white painted paper,  plastic bottles, and a hand holding a sign that reads “Disabled people want to stay cool.” The Equal Lives has been placed on the bottom left hand corner. This Equal Lives logo features the words Equal Lives in white text. To the right of the text are small, simple bird silhouettes in flight. Beneath the name is the tagline “Free From Disabling Barriers”.

That very hot Friday in June, we went to the Deaf festival in Norwich. It was meant to be a celebration—a chance to dance, connect, and belong. But the Deaf rave festival was cancelled because of the heat. Some people packed up and left.

We all said the same thing: "We can't control the weather." It was scorching. Our clothes stuck to our skin. Yet we stayed. We kept our energy alive, determined to connect with our Deaf friends and community.

People talked about last year's festival—how wonderful it had been. "If it hadn't been so hot," some said, "we would have come in much larger numbers." But many Deaf people stayed anyway. Some chose to be there, even in the heat. They didn't want to miss their friends. They didn't want to feel alone.

As night fell, things changed for us. My neurodivergent daughter became unsettled and distressed. The heat had worn her down. We lay in the dark, using ice packs and wet towels to cool ourselves. We finally fell asleep after midnight.

I am sure that we weren't alone in struggling that night.

This summer was the hottest on record

This summer has been one of the driest and hottest we have ever known. Scientists have a warning for us: this is the coldest summer we will likely experience again. We have already exceeded the 1.5-degree target that world leaders committed to in Paris. There is no going back now.

While we were writing this piece, wildfires broke out closer to home. Houses in the Midlands blazed. Families lost everything. We still have some hope and a window of opportunity to change, scientists tell us. But politicians seem to forget that if they continue allowing oil companies to drill for more oil, we won’t have another planet to go.

A crisis that affects us all, but not equally

When heatwaves, droughts and floods strike, disabled people are often affected the most. Some may struggle to communicate in an emergency. Others cannot leave their homes quickly or safely. Essential equipment may fail, and medicines that need refrigeration can be put at risk.

The impact is not only physical. People with invisible disabilities, long-term mental health conditions, learning disabilities, and neurodivergent people can find extreme weather especially overwhelming. The disruption, uncertainty and rapid changes can increase anxiety, affect wellbeing and make people feel more isolated.

But here's what matters most: it's not disability that's the problem. It's the barriers.

Every single day, disabled people struggle to access:

·       Healthcare

·       Welfare rights

·       Housing

·       Transport

·       Emergency services

·       Essential support that disappears in a crisis

Now add climate change to that list. The barriers get worse. The needs get bigger. And disabled people are already carrying so many burdens.

Many live in poverty. Many face racism because they belong to ethnic minorities. Many face homophobia because they are part of the LGBTQ+ community. Many cannot find work. Many live with long-term health conditions that never go away.

These challenges don't exist separately. They pile up on top of each other. They reinforce each other. They make life harder in ways that are difficult to measure but impossible to ignore.

When climate disaster strikes, disabled people don't just face the heat or the flood. They face all of this all at once.

And then comes the hardest part: when disabled people are already fighting fuel poverty and systemic exclusion every single day, being told to "think about sustainability" or "transition to renewables" feels impossible. It feels exhausting. It feels like asking someone drowning to worry about tomorrow's weather.

How can you care about the future when you're struggling to survive today?

But the changes we make today will definitely shape what the future looks like. And one of the things we can still do is include all the voices in climate action.

Disabled people are left out of climate discussions

Disabled people are often not included in climate policy decisions. Research shows that disability is seen as a problem of weakness, not as knowledge and lived experience that could help.

The UK government says it wants net zero by 2050. It recognises that disabled people's needs must be included. But disabled people are still left out of climate action and environmental leadership.

The problem is not disability itself. The problem is the way society is designed. Too often, disabled people's knowledge, expertise and lived experience are ignored when decisions are made.

Recently, I watched a presentation about the Transition Town movement, a well-known approach to tackling the climate crisis through community action and sustainability. The ideas were inspiring, and the vision of the future was hopeful. The town being presented was full of bicycles and people cycling everywhere. There were no cars, and even former car parks had been turned into spaces for bicycles.

But something did not feel right.

I stopped and asked myself: who is this future designed for? Where are disabled people in this picture? What about wheelchair users, people with mobility impairments, or those who cannot cycle because of a disability or long-term health condition?

The vision seemed to be built around the needs and experiences of non-disabled people. It reminded me how easy it is for good intentions to overlook accessibility and inclusion. A sustainable future must also be an accessible future. Otherwise, we risk creating communities that are greener, but not fairer.

Disability Rights UK and Friends of the Earth have highlighted the same concern. Disabled people are often excluded from climate discussions because of discrimination and ableist assumptions. This exclusion, sometimes called eco-ableism, can deepen existing inequalities and prevent disabled people from helping to shape the decisions that affect all our futures.

The term eco-ableism was coined by a disabled, neurodivergent environmental activist. It describes how the exclusion of disabled people from climate action and climate policy reinforces inequality and limits our ability to shape a sustainable future.

We saw this reflected in Norwich during the People's Emergency Briefing. Disabled people raised important questions: How will the transition to a low-carbon future affect us? Who is listening to our voices? While the Government's Disability Action Plan recognises that disabled people's needs must be better integrated into policy, recognition alone is not enough.

Collaboration is the answer

Climate justice offers an opportunity to do things differently. The transition to a greener and more sustainable society must also be a fair one. That means putting the experiences and needs of those most affected by inequality, including disabled people, at the heart of decision-making, not treating inclusion as a token gesture.

There is still a gap to bridge. Environmental organisations often see Disabled People's Organisations (DPOs) as beneficiaries of climate action rather than as equal partners and leaders in climate conversations. At the same time, DPOs are sometimes seen as lacking expertise on climate policy, adaptation and resilience. These assumptions prevent valuable knowledge, experience and solutions from being shared.

The answer is greater collaboration. Environmental organisations and DPOs must work together to ensure disabled people's voices, experiences and expertise are part of climate action from the start. By bringing disability justice and climate justice together, we can build a future that is not only sustainable, but accessible, inclusive and fair for everyone.

Written by

Ana, an Equal Lives staff member

References 

Disability Rights Fund. (2025). Investing in Disability-Inclusive Climate Justice: A Guide for Funders. Disability Rights Fund. https://www.disabilityrightsfund.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Climate-Guide-Final.pdf 

Environment and Climate Change Committee (2025) Written evidence submitted to the Environmental Audit Committee inquiry. Available at: https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/149275/html/ (Accessed: 4 August 2026). 

Howard, J. (2024) ‘Participatory Action Research’, Participatory Methods. Available at: https://www.participatorymethods.org/methodology/participatory-action-research/ (Accessed: 3 August 2026). 

Kirkcaldy, H. (2025) ‘Climate adaptation is failing Disabled people – and it’s no accident’, Institute for Policy Research (IPR) Blog, University of Bath, 26 November. 

Maton, P. and Lockhart, L. (2026) ‘Disability, Race, and The Climate Crisis’, Disability Rights UK, 24 March. 

Moral Imaginations (n.d.) ‘Imagination Activism’. Available at: https://www.moralimaginations.com/imaginationactivism (Accessed: 5 August 2026). 

Stein, P. and Stein, M.A. (2021) ‘Climate change and the right to health of people with disabilities’, The Lancet Global Health, 10(1), pp. e24-e25. 

UK Government (2024) Disability Action Plan. London: UK Government. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/disability-action-plan (Accessed: 5 August 2026).  

University College London (2024) Disability and Climate Justice Research Project: Final Report. London: UCL Population Health Sciences. Available at: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/population-health-sciences/sites/population_health_sciences/files/disability_and_climate_justice_research_project_final_to_share.pdf (Accessed: 5 August 2026).