The bullying of disabled people can often be subtle. Over time, I’ve become immune and also cynical. You filter out a lot of the abuse in order to get on with your life.

But last week, I was at a pedestrian crossing in north London, and here’s the question: am I being oversensitive if I react to a cyclist speeding towards me shouting abuse? He didn’t stop and neither did I, meaning the poor dear in his black storm trooper helmet had to swerve to avoid me because I dared to be on the crossing. He did shout “Fucking spastic!” – which I suppose means he fine-tuned his abuse to include a repellent reference to impairment. I didn’t respond. What would be the point?

These days something like this seems to happen to me on a weekly basis, and I can’t help thinking it has something to do with the way disabled people have come to feel like second-class citizens over the last seven years of coalition/Tory government. Because, apart from the odd heroic Paralympian, or the tragic-brave subject of yet another prurient Channel 5 documentary, we’re all fakes, aren’t we? Lazy scroungers.

If you can’t get to a pub or your favourite shop, then your visibility in your community decreases exponentially

A recent report by the equality and human rights commission shows that in many areas – the report highlights nine – the situation for disabled people has gone backwards. It notes that 18.4% of disabled 16-64s in the UK are considered to be in food poverty, compared with 7.5% of non-disabled people; at least 47% of the housing benefit claimants affected by the so-called “bedroom tax” have a disability; and material deprivation rates for families which include a disabled person are 59%, compared with 36% of the total population. The report also shows that disability hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales increased 44% in 2015/2016.

Crucially, the report emphasises continuing poor access to transport and other services, “creating a barrier to independence … and enjoyment of day to day activities.” The report also notes an overall increase “in the percentage of disabled adults who reported having difficulty accessing services in areas of health, benefits, tax, culture, sport and leisure”. In 2012–14, 45.3% of disabled people experienced these difficulties, compared with 31% of non-disabled people.

‘Apart from the odd heroic Paralympian, or the tragic-brave subject of yet another prurient Channel 5 documentary, we’re all fakes, aren’t we?’ Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

When you become disabled – and 83% of impairments and health conditions are acquired in adult life – you immediately fall into this low, mostly disregarded social status, and experience heightened risk of social exclusion. If your social care package is cut, for example, and you lose direct assistance in getting out of bed, or organising appropriate transport, your opportunities to leave the house immediately plummet. If you can’t get to a pub or your favourite shop, or if you can’t maintain contact with friends, then your presence, input and visibility in your community decreases exponentially. Frankly, non-disabled society forgets you exist and when you fight to break out of this exclusion, to claim your rightful place in society, you suddenly become an easy target.

Exclusion has defined disabled people in the public imagination as being powerless, and lacking fundamental rights. And this stigmatisation and alienation, in my experience, drives an increase in bullying and abuse. Name-calling has of course been around for ever, and is always directed at those perceived as different and the other. I’ve experienced it all my life, but it’s changed significantly in recent years because it seems government-sanctioned. There is a nasty, insidious economic rationale to all this: you lot cost money, therefore you don’t belong and you’re taking up unnecessary space and resources.

Theatre maker and comedian Jess Thom, co-founder of the project Touretteshero has written about a jaw-dropping experience she had on public transport, when she was subjected to a barrage of abuse, including “the bus smells of shit since you came in”. Three months ago, my car was keyed the day I had my blue badge displayed. A friend reports that she was harassed out of a restaurant for needing help to eat. Elsewhere, another was told he couldn’t come in – aggressively – because “that thing”, his wheelchair, wouldn’t fit in there. These experiences can make disabled people feel they don’t want to face the world. Getting on the bus can feel like going into battle – because if there is any issue with the ramp, or if there’s enough space to accommodate a wheelchair (now supposedly a legal right for us) – there’s always the looming potential for bullying. I’ve been bullied off a bus by passengers – an incident which reached its height when the driver joined in. The bullying included remarks about my wheelchair, its position on the bus, and references to me and my physical impairments.

Aged campaigner that I am, it’s hard to know what new initiatives will change these ingrained attitudes; we can only keep telling our stories and work to dismantle the social construct that separates disabled people from the non-disabled. Remove the barrier: enforce the Equalities Act. This means genuinely addressing issues of access at all levels, from access to a workplace to provision of accessible formats – from large print to audio description, British Sign Language and subtitling.

At a local level, disabled people’s organisations have campaigned tirelessly to improve our environment, and this is evident in dropped kerbs, tactile paving, access to council buildings and services. The change has been significant in my lifetime, but even so, we remain second-class citizens, and disabled people must be part of the equation of intersectionality, inclusion and diversity, every single time. Perhaps some humans will always bully other humans, but exposing the chronic levels of abuse disabled people experience – and the second-class status that contributes to this – has to be a start in addressing it.