In February 2023, the UK’s first ever National Centre for Accessible Transport (ncat) was established. Funded by the Motability Foundation, over the next seven years the Centre will shape the future by influencing the transport sector to ensure that all future travel systems have accessibility for disabled people at the heart of their creation and delivery.
ncat is set up to be an ‘evidence centre’ so its remit is to understand, document and analyse the current transport landscape. We do this by engaging with disabled people to hear about their transport experiences. We use their insights alongside consultations with transport and industry professionals, to understand what does work, and what doesn’t work. With this foundation, we identify opportunities for improvements and make recommendations to make transport more accessible in the future.
The centre will work in the first phase to generate these insights and evidence. This will, in the second phase, translate into and inform a funding call which will bring together transport innovators to work collaboratively with transport professionals/providers, disabled people, and disabled peoples’ organisations, to develop, test and implement solutions, working always alongside policy makers to influence behaviours. The third phase will look to embed the evidenced learning to enable the adoption and implementation of sustainable change.
