Bad news. Good news. And a hall full of possibility.

It's been a grim week for disability news.

Access to Work is in crisis. One disability organisation found that support hours for their clients dropped by 82% in three years. Inaccessible railway stations are locking millions of people out of travel, employment, and healthcare. Benefits reform is creating real fear for hundreds of thousands of families.

If you've been following the headlines, you could be forgiven for feeling like disability is under attack.

But step back for a moment. Because there's another story. And next week, I'll be right in the middle of it.

I'm heading to Naidex at the NEC in Birmingham on 26 March.

For those who don't know it — Naidex is the UK's biggest disability, accessibility and independent living exhibition. Over 200 exhibitors. More than 10,000 visitors. The sheer scale of it always stops me in my tracks.

Think about what's on the floor. Wheelchairs. Stairlifts. Adapted vehicles. Smart home technology. Communication devices. A Nelson knife — the elegant little gadget that lets a one-handed person cut their food. Every conceivable aid, device and innovation you can imagine. And this year, for the first time, a dedicated hub just for children and young people.

This is an industry. A serious, growing, innovative industry.

The UK assistive technology market alone is worth over £1 billion — and it's on course to nearly triple by 2030. The "Purple Pound" — the combined spending power of disabled people and their families — is estimated at somewhere between £274 billion and £446 billion a year. Businesses that ignore disability aren't just being unkind. They're leaving staggering sums on the table.

Disability, it turns out, is very good for business.

But here's what matters even more than the numbers. Walk around that exhibition floor and you'll find something that would have been almost unthinkable in my day. Disabled people aren't just buying this stuff. They're designing it. Building it. Running the companies that make it.

Take wheelchairs. Some of the most innovative wheelchair manufacturers are now founded and led by wheelchair users. People who know — from the inside — what a chair actually needs to do. Not what an able-bodied engineer thinks it needs to do.

This is what "nothing about us without us" looks like when it moves from slogan to reality. Disabled people at every level — in the design studio, in the boardroom, on the exhibition stand. Not as inspiration. As experts.

We're not there yet. Not fully. But Naidex gives you a glimpse of what it could look like. And when I think about what that hall might contain in twenty years' time — designed, built and led by the next generation of disabled innovators — it's hard not to feel something close to hope.

At Naidex, I'll be on stage with two colleagues. It's a simple idea: past, present and future.

I'll be talking about the 1950s and 60s — my childhood. I spent most of it in institutions. Not a mainstream school. Not the local community. Somewhere separate, out of sight, out of mind.

Simon Minty, my co-host on The Way We Roll podcast, will talk about the 70s, 80s and 90s. He went to an ordinary school. That alone marks a shift. But his path still had barriers most people never had to think about.

Then there's Abbi Browne. She's younger than us. She went to Cambridge. She now works for the National Deaf Children's Society. She'll talk about what it's like now and what challenges lie ahead.

Her world and mine — growing up — are almost unrecognisable from each other.

Three generations. Three completely different experiences of being disabled in Britain.

What strikes me, thinking about it, is how far we've come. And how much of that progress happened not through luck, but through disabled people refusing to be quiet.

The fight isn't over. Not by a long way. The headlines this week prove that.

But here's what I know: the direction of travel matters. And when I roll into that hall next week I'll be reminded that an awful lot of people are building a better world for disabled people.

That's worth holding onto.

Phil Friend will be speaking at Naidex at the NEC, Birmingham, on 26 March 2026.