The last five years of welfare reform have hit disabled people hardFlickr: Bentley Smith

I am sitting in my college buttery the day after the General Election, giving an exasperated monologue on what the next five years will mean in terms of welfare: “They’re forcing people who can’t work into work, and at the same time capping Access to Work so that disabled people who want to work can’t anyway!”

“Well,” says the Tory voter sitting opposite, “They can just work from home.”

This says a lot about what five years of a largely Conservative government have done to widespread attitudes towards the ill and disabled. In amongst the celebrity exposés and the comment pieces about Josie Cunningham’s boobs, articles about fraudulent Disability Living Allowance (DLA) claimants being “caught” playing golf or walking to the shops feature so regularly in the Daily Mail that you would be forgiven for thinking that every other disabled person was secretly running marathons in their back garden.

Quite aside from the fact that not all disabilities affect a person’s physical mobility – and that many mobility-impaired people are still occasionally able to walk – the regularity with which these articles appear represents a gross overestimation. The British media is feeding the public a lie, and it’s one with serious social ramifications. Disability hate crime is on the rise. Throwaway comments about so-called “benefit scroungers” are becoming increasingly socially acceptable. Maybe it’s just because I am growing up, but, in the past few years, I have experienced far more strangers making unpleasant comments when I dare to stand up in public than ever before.

Back in 2009, standing to use an escalator or walk down a flight of stairs rarely drew anything other than a smile or offer of assistance. Now, while on days when I cannot stand, I still receive almost ubiquitous kindness and offers of help. However the minute I stand up, I am ignored, frowned upon or even verbally abused.

As a woman I met on a train the other day told me, “If, on a good day, I’ve managed to walk down the street unaided, that’s a major achievement. I feel like I deserve congratulation. Instead, I am gossiped about, accused of not needing a wheelchair, and have even been reported for benefit fraud”.

In 2012, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith told the Telegraph that, over the previous “few” years, DLA claimants had risen by 30 per cent. But that is not necessarily because of an increase in fraud. DLA was only introduced in 1992 – as more people learn about the benefit, more people claim it (I only began claiming it myself in 2009). And, as medicine improves, higher numbers of disabled children are living into adulthood, thus able to claim DLA. Disabled children have begun this awkward habit of surviving, you see. What a crime.

While we might be alive, not all of us are capable of work. There are many people with physical, mental or intellectual disabilities and illnesses so severe that a ‘good’ day is one where they make it out of bed. Others have fluctuating disabilities and illnesses: they might be capable of working on a ‘good’ day, but those good days are rare and unpredictable. What kind of employer would employ someone who will only work two days a fortnight, who won’t know if they can work until that morning, and who might leave at any point for a lie-down?

I won’t personally be affected by the cuts. The privilege of a Cambridge education and the sort of intelligence which society values means I have a job lined up for when I graduate, in an office which is already accessible enough that I won’t need Access to Work in order to make adaptations. I will be able to afford rent, so I won’t need housing benefit. The job is in London, so I will be able to travel on accessible buses, without needing an Access to Work travel package, or a Motability funded car. Although I am a full-time wheelchair user, I do not have communication problems or a carer, so I don’t need Access to Work-funded communication equipment, Carer’s Allowance, or an Independent Living Fund to pay for 24-hour care.

Lucky for me, because all the benefits listed above have either already been cut, or are set to be capped or cut in the near future.

Thanks to the welfare reform of the last five years, disabled people have been hit nine times harder than the non-disabled, according to the Centre for Welfare Reform. Over the next five, it is once again going to be those most in need of help who are hardest hit.

@AbbiSigns