About Us
Who we are
Established in 1981, The British Council of Disabled People (BCODP) acts as a co-ordinating and representative body for disabled people and organisations controlled by disabled people. We now have 130 member groups and many hundreds of individual members covering about 400,000 disabled people in all. We are the genuinely representative voice of disabled people in the United Kingdom.
Its mission statement is:
"To secure, by all democratic means, our full and equal human and civil rights as disabled people in the UK."
It has led the campaign for treating disability as a civil rights issue, and also led the campaign for anti-discrimination legislation.
One relevant objective of BCODP is to provide information and support to our member groups and to disabled people to help them organise themselves into campaigning organisations to work together to achieve change. Our web presence is an important vehicle for carrying out that objective.
The main purpose of this website is:
"To create, maintain and develop a well-visited and well-used web-based interactive information resource to enable disabled people and their organisations to increasingly work together to campaign effectively for their rights, which is self-financing immediately and which subsequently provides additional funds for BCODP."
Photograph of Paul Matthews. Web Designer & Businessman. Born 20th November 1970 - Died 21st April 2002.[d]Tribute to Paul Matthews
This website is also dedicated to Paul Matthews who was an ardent activist of disabled people's civil and human rights. His family generously agreed to donate to the British Council of Disabled People the domain name disabilityinformation.com to promote the Disabled People's movement and Independent Living movement in the United Kingdom.
The Disabled People's Community will sorely miss the energy, ideas, and presence of Paul Matthews who died on Sunday 21st April 2002.
The most remarkable achievement of the businessman, campaigner and web designer Paul Matthews, who died aged 31 of a chest infection, was the setting up of DisabilityNet, a web portal for disabled people and those needing information on disability issues. It became the world's largest and most popular disability information website, used by up to 700 people a day.
Born and raised in Derby, unlike most of his disabled peers Paul went to mainstream primary and secondary schools, in Hatton. His father was a turner at the local Rolls Royce factory. From these working class roots - and aware of the barriers facing him as someone living with spinal muscular atrophy - he went on to take a degree in computer studies at Derby University, where he became involved in the disabled people's movement.
Paul quickly became pivotal in several organisations: he was responsible for securing core funding for Muscle Power, a voluntary organisation representing people with muscular impairments; from 1994, he was information manager for Disability Direct, which gave advice on disability issues; and since 1998, he had been director of Care for Independence (Derbyshire) Ltd, employing more than 30 workers giving information and training on independent living for disabled people.
In all these roles, Paul worked hard at producing accessible newsletters and resources for other disabled people, on issues ranging from accessible housing to managing your own community care package. The liberating power of information was an issue close to his heart and working life.
The facts and resources he provided on DisabilityNet, which he set up in 1995, made a profound difference to thousands, until its closure in 2000, when it became part of a larger business. He also continued to work as a newsletter editor for several publications, including the British Council of Disabled People.
Paul was also a campaigner, often railing against the injustice of the means testing of disabled people by the independent living fund. The government-funded charity paid towards his 24-hour personal assistance and offered him the chance of independence - but took it away by removing the majority of his income. So much so, in fact, that he was quoted in a House of Lords debate:
"I employ nearly 30 people, and yet every single one of them earns more than I am allowed to keep!"
He is survived by his parents and his sister.