You don’t have to scroll very far into the comments of a disabled creator’s post before it starts. At best, jealousy. At worst, pure hatred. As if life isn’t already hard enough.
Being a disabled content creator means growing a thick skin fast. The second you talk about your experience, campaign for better accessibility, or have the audacity to mention how expensive it actually is to be disabled, the comments flood in.
“I pay taxes to fund this.”
“If you can make videos, you can work full-time.”
“I’ll be sending this to the DWP!”
Disabled people in the UK are increasingly being treated less like citizens and more like suspicious line items on a budget spreadsheet. So let’s talk about it — specifically, about the real cost of being disabled in the UK, and why disabled people are allowed to have a life.
Nobody’s living large right now. But disabled people have it worse.
I’m not going to pretend the cost of living crisis isn’t real. It absolutely is. Everyone is struggling. Inflation, stagnant wages, the whole lot. Around 13.4 million people in the UK are estimated to be living in relative poverty, and with the minimum wage for a 40-hour week sitting at just £24,804, many people are working hard to barely scrape above the poverty line.
People are exhausted and broke, and I get it. I genuinely do.
But here’s the thing: the cost of being disabled in the UK means you’re already dealing with a financial gap that most people don’t see. Scope’s 2025 research found that disabled households need an extra £1,095 per month just to have the same standard of living as a non-disabled household. PIP is supposed to help bridge that gap. The average award? £465 a month. That’s a £630 shortfall. Every single month.
That’s before you factor in prescription costs, wheelchair taxis, hospital parking, mobility aids, higher utility bills, delivery fees because you can’t always get to the shops, subscriptions to tools that help manage your symptoms (more on those in another post!), life insurance that costs more because you’re disabled… the list genuinely goes on.
And then there’s Adult Social Care, which (spoiler) is not free. There’s an assessment, a weekly contribution calculated from your income, housing costs, and “cost of disability.” It doesn’t account for debt repayments or just, y’know, being an adult with bills. Many people, including people not in work, contribute to their own social care through their benefits. That’s part of what the Daily Living component of PIP exists for.
I receive support from my carers. They help me wash my hair, do laundry, get to appointments, prepare meals, and loads of other things that I’d really struggle to manage alone. That support isn’t a luxury. It’s how I function.
Why does everyone think benefits are just… free money?
There’s been a sustained media effort for years to make the public feel angry about welfare. Programmes like Benefits Street built entertainment out of portraying low-income families badly. The tabloids have hammered on “scroungers” and fraud stories for decades. And it works. It creates an us vs. them narrative between “hardworking taxpayers” and claimants, as if those two groups never overlap.
They do, by the way. Massively.
I claimed Universal Credit whilst working above minimum wage, because the government calculated my salary wasn’t enough to live on alone. I was still paying tax. I was still working. Parents don’t get side-eyed for claiming Child Benefit. Pensioners aren’t accused of fraud for receiving their State Pension. All of it: UC, PIP, Child Benefit, State Pension, comes from the same pot. But somehow disability benefits get treated differently.
And going through the PIP and capability-for-work process? Exhausting doesn’t cover it. The forms are long and complex. You have to detail every single thing you can and can’t do, and back it all up with letters and reports. Then you sit through an assessment that goes over the same things again. If you’re lucky, you get awarded. If you’re not, you often end up going to tribunal, which is lengthy and stressful, but frequently results in an award once impartial medical professionals actually look at your case properly.
I was extremely lucky. My paperwork and evidence were strong enough to get a paper-based assessment, which is genuinely rare. I know how fortunate that makes me.
The “if you can do that, you can work” argument is exhausting.
Here’s mine: I had a stroke. I went back to work after two and a half months, doing four hours a day. Even that was too much. I was so fatigued I could barely manage anything else. I was lucky to have a supportive manager and team who made real adjustments for me. Then my site closed. I was made redundant.
I could work in that environment because I already knew the systems, the processes, the people. My brain retained that. What my brain doesn’t do well since my stroke is retain new information. Starting somewhere new, getting up to a new employer’s standard: realistically, that’s not something I could do right now.
That’s where GlitchyButCute came from. I write on good days. I film on good days. On not-so-good days, I rest. People see me at my literal best and assume that’s the full picture.
I have neurofatigue and seizures. I need to nap during the day just to get through basic tasks. If I have a seizure, I’m out for the rest of the day. The postictal exhaustion is no joke. My symptoms fluctuate, and managing that fluctuation in itself takes energy. Add in medications and appointments on top, and fitting in traditional employment becomes almost impossible to imagine.
A lot of disabled people run small businesses or create content for the same reason. It lets them work around their lives rather than the other way around. And yet, it’s constantly used as a gotcha. “If you can make a TikTok, you can work in an office.” No. No, we really can’t. They’re not the same thing.
We’re allowed to have nice things. Yes, even us.
There’s an unspoken rule that disabled people should make themselves small. Society’s comfortable with the hospital bed narrative, the charity advert, the “brave battler.” The second a disabled person posts a holiday, shows off a collection, dyes their hair, or just… looks like they’re enjoying their life, the tone shifts.
“My taxes paid for that.”
“If you can afford that, you don’t need benefits.”
“I can’t do that, so why should you be able to?”
Disabled people are expected to survive. Not thrive. Just necessities, presented with visible suffering, at all times.
I have a pink palace. I have Funko pops, Loungefly bags, Nanoleafs. Most were bought before my stroke. Some have been gifted to me. The comments telling me to sell my belongings to fund my own social care are… a lot. As if becoming disabled means forfeiting everything you’d built or been given.
I’ve had comments about my appearance too. My nails, my hair. I have a friend who dyes my hair for me. I get my nails done. Those things help me still feel like me. I can’t do my makeup the way I used to. There’s a very real grief in losing who you were before, and this is my way of holding onto some control over a body that’s changed beyond recognition.
The real question nobody’s asking
The resentment people feel towards disabled people having any kind of life? That resentment is real, and it comes from a real place. People are burnt out, overworked, financially drowning. Seeing someone who appears to have freedom or flexibility can sting.
But that resentment is being weaponised. Politicians and media feed on it. Cuts to disability benefits get framed as common sense because clearly disabled people are getting too much. Look at them, living their lives! It’s designed to divide us, to direct anger downward, toward some of the most vulnerable people in society, rather than asking the bigger question:
Why are any of us living like this?
We exist in a capitalist system where human worth is tied to productivity. So someone who can’t consistently produce labour gets their value questioned. Their entitlement to resources, their right to rest, their right to joy. But humans deserve those things whether they’re producing labour or not. That’s not radical. It’s just basic decency.
A society should be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable people. Whether disabled people are allowed dignity, creativity, joy, rest, and community. Not just quiet survival.
Disabled people do not exist to suffer politely and be grateful for scraps.
We are allowed joy. We are allowed softness. We are allowed hobbies, ambition, style, friendship, technology, creativity, and rest.
Thriving is not evidence that support was never needed. It’s evidence that the support is working.
And that’s the whole bloody point.