Please note: The first round of funding is now closed. We will be open for applications in summer 2025.
We are committed to continuing our support for disabled people through the six grant programmes, using £50 million of the donation we received in 2023. This new funding will be available for charities and organisations, to apply for in summer 2025.
Through our research grants, we will help charities and organisations to develop, expand and improve transport related research for disabled people, and produce data and findings that can be freely accessed by all.
Examples of areas where we have focused our grant making included but are not limited to:
- Grant funding for research into barriers and challenges faced by disabled people when accessing or using transport.
- Grant funding for transport related research that identifies good practice and evaluates solutions.
- Grant funding to conduct research to inform and improve new or existing transport related programmes and product design.
Why are we doing this?
Disabled people make 38% fewer journeys than non-disabled people – a figure that has not changed in the last decade.
This “transport accessibility gap” tells us that there is much more that transport providers need to do to make sure that disabled people can travel across road, rail and air like non-disabled people, but to do it right, they need to know what disabled people want and need.
Investment in user-centred research and development can make a large impact for many disabled people.
It opens doors and makes tangible differences to how they access transport in the UK.
That is why we have identified research as a priority investment area.
Over the last year, Motability Foundation has grant funded a number of research related projects, including:
- User research carried out by disability charities to better understand the problems that disabled people face in the transport system - and how they can potentially be solved.
- Supporting a PhD scholarship project at Coventry University for disabled people and people with lived experience of disability.
- Recently launching the National Centre for Accessible Transport (ncat) which we are funding.
From these projects we established that research is a key area in which we can help other charities and organisations to inform their work.
