16/12/2025
Hidden Disability, Blue Badges and the Performance No One Signed Up For
I have a hidden disability. You would not know that by looking at me.
I can walk. I can stand. On some days I look completely well. And yet I hold a blue badge because without reasonable access, everyday life becomes significantly harder, sometimes impossible.
Using a blue badge should be a practical adjustment. Instead, it often feels like a public test.
When I park, I am aware of eyes on me. I feel the pause before opening the door. I notice the scan, the assessment, the silent question. Am I disabled enough to be here?
This is the reality for many people with hidden disabilities.
Judgement and Being Challenged
I have experienced the looks. The comments. The sense that my body is being audited by strangers. Sometimes it is overt. Sometimes it is subtle. But it is always there.
“You don’t look disabled.”
“You seem fine to me.”
“I saw you walking earlier.”
These judgements assume that disability must be visible, consistent and easily recognisable. They also assume that strangers are entitled to explanations.
They are not.
A blue badge is not handed out casually. It exists because a genuine need has been assessed. Yet the moment you step out of the car without a limp, a stick or a wheelchair, that legitimacy is quietly withdrawn in the minds of others.
Performative Parking and the Pressure to Look Unwell
There is an unspoken pressure to perform disability.
People with hidden disabilities talk about slowing their walk, exaggerating pain, hesitating before standing upright. Some feel guilty for walking normally. Others fear that not limping will invite confrontation.
This I call performative parking. A situation where access is only respected if suffering is visible.
No one should have to act unwell to be believed.
The irony is painful. Many of us are using a blue badge precisely to preserve function, manage energy or prevent deterioration. We may look better because the adjustment is working. That does not mean it is unnecessary.
Fluctuating Capacity Is Still Disability
Hidden disabilities often fluctuate. What I can manage one day may be impossible the next. I might walk comfortably from the car but be unable to cope with the return journey, the standing, the sensory load or the delayed physical impact.
Disability is not a snapshot. It is a pattern over time.
Yet people use isolated moments to invalidate the whole experience. A short walk becomes evidence. A good day becomes suspicion. A neutral expression becomes proof that nothing is wrong.
The Emotional Cost
What this creates is not accountability. It creates anxiety.
I know people who avoid using their blue badge unless absolutely desperate. People who brace themselves emotionally before parking. People who over explain, apologise or carry quiet shame for needing support.
Instead of access, they experience surveillance.
That is not inclusion. That is conditional acceptance.
Why Challenging Someone Is Harmful
There is no ethical way to judge disability by sight.
Challenging someone using a blue badge does not protect disabled people. It polices them. It reinforces the idea that only certain bodies are worthy of accommodation and that dignity must be earned through visible suffering.
If someone has a blue badge, that is enough.
Hidden disability does not require public proof.
We’re not obliged to limp to make you comfortable. Or required to perform pain to justify access. I don’t owe my medical history to strangers in a car park.
The problem is not so much misuse of blue badges. The problem is a culture that equates disability with appearance and treats access as something to be defended rather than shared.
If we want truly inclusive spaces, we must start by trusting people and letting go of the idea that disability has a single look. There are people employed to be blue badge police, literally. Let them be the ones to do their job.
