‘Nothing about us without us’: The disability charity boss nudging Britain to do better

Leonard Cheshire’s new CEO Ruth Owen speaks to James Moore about greater representation in the board room, the tech levelling the playing field and picking up the pieces of the social care sector after coronavirus

Ruth Owen is the new CEO of Leonard Cheshire Disability (Supplied)

My dream would be… you know my dream would be to be able to go to a toilet in a restaurant without a kerfuffle.”

So says Ruth Owen, the new CEO of Leonard Cheshire Disability. It seems strange that anyone would have to cite a fuss-free trip to the loo as a dream in a wealthy western democracy.

But Owen has been a full-time wheelchair user since the age of seven and the harsh reality for her, and so many other disabled people in Britain, is that her dream remains a distant one. And the pandemic has shifted it even further away.