Beyond visibility: Six ways sponsors can make a difference for the lived experience of disabled communities - UKSA to celebrate Champion of Disability Inclusion in 2027

Brands are using sponsorship to remove barriers to participation, improve accessibility, create opportunities for disabled talent and ensure that experiences which non-disabled audiences take for granted are available to everyone.

That work will receive special recognition at the UK Sponsorship Awards in 2027. For this edition, UKSA will add a Champion of Disability Inclusion to its longstanding Champions programme, celebrating an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to improving representation, accessibility and opportunities for disabled people through sponsorship. If you know such a person, nominate them now.

UKSA’s recognition reflects the growing range and ambition of work in this sector. Sponsorship as a sector has recognised that disability is not one homogenous experience. Alongside highly visible physical disabilities, sponsors have started to pay overdue attention to people who are blind or partially sighted, deaf or hard of hearing, neurodivergent, or living with other non-visible conditions.

Recent UKSA entries show how far the conversation has moved beyond representation alone. McDonald's Fun Football, for example, has expanded its grassroots programme to provide visually impaired, hearing impaired and pan-disability sessions for children who may not be able to participate in mainstream provision. Working with disability sport organisations and the UK football associations, the initiative demonstrated that inclusion can be built into a major grassroots sponsorship rather than bolted on as an occasional activation. The programme also delivered commercially, with brand trust increasing by 20%.

Toyota, meanwhile, has made disability a significant component of its investment in cricket. As the ECB's first Official Champion of Disability Cricket, the brand supports disability cricket from grassroots participation through to the Disability Premier League and England teams. Nor is disability inclusion primarily a sports issue. Arts and entertainment partnerships can address two equally important questions: who gets to experience culture and who gets the opportunity to create and perform it.

There is an important reality check which suggests that progress is uneven and some areas remain chronically under-supported. UK Deaf Sport recently told a Parliamentary inquiry that an intermediary working on its behalf had approached 250 potential sponsors without securing a single offer. Although backing was subsequently secured ahead of the Tokyo Deaflympics, the evidence underlined how difficult it can still be for disabled athletes and organisations to attract commercial support.

So how can sponsors play their part? Here are six ways partnerships can make a meaningful difference to the lived experience of disabled communities.

Remove a real barrier - start with what prevents people from participating.

This might be physical access to a venue, the absence of suitable sporting provision, inaccessible digital content, cost, transport, communication or simply a lack of confidence that an activity has been designed with disabled people in mind.

McDonald’s Fun Football is a good example because the intervention is practical. Its programme includes dedicated visually impaired, hearing impaired and pan-disability provision. The emphasis isn’t simply on telling disabled children they are welcome; it is on creating opportunities in which they can actually participate.

Toyota’s cricket partnership takes a similarly practical approach. Disability Cricket Champion Clubs are designed to give local clubs the resources and support they need to offer cricket to people with different requirements.

Toyota's support also extends to ParalympicsGB's Every Body Moves, an online platform helping disabled people find accessible sport and physical activity. Co-produced with disabled people, it features 45,000 inclusive sessions and puts lived experience at the heart of its approach - addressing a basic barrier to participation by helping people discover what opportunities are actually available to them.

But the principle applies just as readily to culture. In 2025, Wates Developments became sponsor of Chichester Festival Theatre's Relaxed Performances, supporting performances adapted for audiences who might otherwise find the conventional theatre environment difficult. Adjustments include reduced volume and lighting, a pre-show introduction and a chill-out area, with the performances particularly benefiting autistic and neurodivergent audiences and people with anxiety or learning disabilities.

After one recent Relaxed Performance, 95% of audience members surveyed said the experience had had a positive impact on their quality of life.

The lesson for sponsors is straightforward: don't start by asking how disability can feature in your campaign. Ask what is stopping people taking part - and whether your sponsorship can help remove that obstacle.

Make accessibility part of the experience - not an add-on or afterthought.

Wates' support at Chichester is an example of sponsorship helping change the experience itself. Another strong example seen by the UK Sponsorship Awards came from Toyota and Allianz’s sponsorship of Channel 4's Paris 2024 Paralympic coverage. British Sign Language, captions and audio description were incorporated into sponsorship idents, making accessibility part of the communications.

That principle can apply almost anywhere: captioned content, BSL interpretation, audio description, accessible websites and apps, sensory-friendly environments and better physical access to venues. Sponsors spend considerable sums improving the experience for VIPs, customers and priority audiences. A useful question is whether disabled audiences are receiving the same attention.

Use your platform to change the conversation

Some barriers aren’t physical. They are about whether people feel part of the culture surrounding a sport, arts organisation or event in the first place.

EE provided an interesting example through its sponsorship of the Home Nations football associations. Working with the Royal Association for Deaf people, Support. It's In Your Hands used football to encourage both Deaf and hearing audiences to learn basic British Sign Language.

The campaign included football-themed BSL lessons involving players such as Harry Kane and Mary Earps, while further activation saw Lionesses wearing shirts displaying their names using the BSL fingerspelling alphabet. Deaf players and creators were brought into the activity and EE also introduced Deaf awareness training for staff.

The important point is that EE used something it already possessed - a major football platform - to bring BSL into a mainstream conversation. Sponsorship can give an inclusion initiative cultural reach that it might struggle to achieve on its own.

Use technology to solve problems, not create gimmicks

Technology can be particularly powerful when sponsorship provides the resources and platform to put an innovation into real-world use.

Sela and Newcastle United's Unsilence the Crowd did exactly that. The initiative used technology to allow Deaf and hard-of-hearing supporters to experience the atmosphere inside St James' Park in a new way. Crucially, this wasn't simply a one-match PR stunt: Sela donated the technology to Newcastle United so supporters with hearing loss could continue to benefit from it throughout the season. The campaign subsequently won the UKSA's DEI award.

As UKSA’s judges noted at the time, the best technology-led disability sponsorship doesn't use disabled people to demonstrate an impressive piece of technology. It uses technology to address something disabled people actually want.

The same test can be applied to any sponsorship innovation: does it create a useful and lasting improvement, or disappear when the campaign ends?

Invest in talent and pathways

Elite Para athletes can be exceptional ambassadors. But sponsorship can have an even greater impact when investment extends beyond famous faces and creates opportunities for people to participate, develop and build careers.

Toyota's cricket partnership illustrates the point. The company is the ECB's first Official Champion of Disability Cricket and title partner of the Disability Premier League, while its wider relationship extends through grassroots and disability cricket.

The arts provide another version of the same idea. Irwin Mitchell is sponsoring Propel Dance's 2026 tour, supporting the company's mission to create professional opportunities for disabled performers and bring wheelchair dance to wider audiences.

Propel is recruiting disabled wheelchair dancers for paid professional roles on its Autumn/Winter 2026 tour, with an accessible recruitment process allowing applications in video, showreel, written or audio form. The partnership therefore provides a useful reminder that arts sponsorship can be about more than making venues accessible to disabled audiences. It can help ensure disabled people have opportunities on the stage as well.

There is room for individual ambassadors too. Stars create visibility and aspiration; pathways create opportunity. The strongest sponsorship strategies can do both.

Work with disabled people, not simply for them

Perhaps the most important principle is also the simplest: involve the community.

Disabled people and specialist organisations understand the barriers they encounter far better than a brand or agency attempting to imagine those barriers on their behalf.

EE's relationship with the Royal Association for Deaf people is a good example. RAD helped support a campaign specifically intended to make Deaf people part of the football conversation, while Deaf talent was incorporated into the activity rather than the campaign relying solely on hearing football stars.

McDonald's development of impairment-specific football provision with organisations including UK Deaf Sport and British Blind Sport provides another model.

The same thinking applies to the arts. Sponsors can work with disabled performers, artists and audiences, as well as specialist organisations, to understand what prevents people participating and what meaningful support actually looks like.

Co-creation helps brands avoid tokenism, but it can also lead to better ideas. A partner may identify an accessibility problem that a sponsor hadn't noticed - and potentially a solution that improves the experience for everyone.

From representation to participation

None of this means visibility lacks value. Far from it. 

Sponsorship can put disabled athletes, performers, creators and communities in front of enormous audiences and challenge assumptions about disability. But the direction of travel is towards something more ambitious.

The strongest partnerships don't simply show disabled people in campaigns. They ask whether sponsorship can provide access, opportunity, technology, training, funding and platforms that would not otherwise exist.

There is also evidence that doing so can create value for brands. McDonald's disability-focused Fun Football work accompanied a 20% increase in brand trust, while Toyota's broader Good For Cricket partnership has strengthened brand sentiment and emotional connection as it has expanded opportunities within disability cricket.

There is also a wider ripple effect. Disability rarely affects one person in isolation. Family members, friends and carers can be directly and emotionally connected to the barriers a disabled person encounters - and to the opportunities that open up when those barriers are removed. A sponsorship that enables a child to play football, a theatre-goer to enjoy a performance or an athlete to pursue their ambitions can therefore resonate with a much wider community than the immediate participant.

In other words, meaningful support for disabled communities has the potential to build affinity not only among those who benefit directly, but among the many people who share their experiences, ambitions and achievements.

And the opportunity extends beyond sport. Wates’ support for Relaxed Performances demonstrates how sponsorship can help audiences experience culture, while Irwin Mitchell’s backing of Propel Dance shows how it can help disabled talent build careers.

That is precisely where sponsorship can be at its most powerful: creating something genuinely valuable for a community while demonstrating something meaningful about the brand behind it.

But the experience of Deaf sport is a salutary reminder not to overstate the progress. High-profile examples of inclusive sponsorship coexist with athletes, performers and organisations that still struggle to secure the backing they need.