Graham Findlay obituary

My husband, Graham Findlay, who has died aged 68 of cancer, was a disability rights activist and housing policy expert. He most recently worked as co-production lead at the charity Scope, responsible for encouraging greater participation by disabled people in the design and construction of housing, workplaces and consumer products.

The idea of inclusive design was one of Graham’s main preoccupations, and he was a champion of disabled people becoming the “architects of their own lives”. Over the years he promoted that goal in roles at Disability Wales and the Chartered Institute of Housing, as well as with his own consultancy.

Born in Walmer, Kent, Graham was the son of Ronald, head of the common market section of the National Coal Board, and Josephine (nee Osmond Jones), a matron at the South London hospital for women. From the age of 10 he suffered from dystonia, a painful neurological movement disorder that caused severe spasms in his neck and torso and impaired his speech.

After attending Woolverstone Hall in Suffolk, a London county council boarding school, Graham went to Southwark sixth form college and then became a trainee journalist in 1975 at the Deeson press agency in London. In 1977 he left that job to take a degree in cultural and media studies at the Polytechnic of Wales (now the University of South Wales), where he graduated with a distinction before undertaking postgraduate studies in critical theory at Cardiff University (1983-84).

Looking for a job in higher education administration or local government, Graham found that his academic references were met with hesitancy by prospective employers wary of his dystonia. Refusal of employment on grounds of disability was permissible in the mid-1980s, and the experience reframed Graham’s views, fuelling in him a desire to bring about change.

After spending several years as the co-owner of a bookshop in Cardiff, he gained a social work qualification at Cardiff University in 1990, allowing him to become a probation officer at Mid Glamorgan county council (1990-91), then a project officer at Barnardo’s (1991-95) and a manager at the Cardiff Housing Access Project.

He subsequently moved to Disability Wales as a senior policy officer (1999-2009) before a switch to the Chartered Institute of Housing as its programme manager, responsible for positive action for disability. He left n 2014, setting up a consultancy, Findlay Equality Services, which he ran in parallel with his work at Scope, coaching and mentoring disabled people in the workplace – until ill-health led him to stop all work in 2025.

Scope’s Graham Findlay Purple Pioneer award, given to those who have made significant strides in advancing disability equality, was named after him following his death.

We met at the Polytechnic of Wales as students and were married in 2002 after 20 years together. Graham is survived by me and our three children, Pearl, Evan and Bryn.