Richard Rieser OBE (Geography, 1970) is the founder of UK Disability History Month and disability rights advocate. His activism, expertise and education over four decades has reshaped how disability equality is understood and implemented in schools, policy, and global human rights frameworks.

Richard’s journey into activism started when worked in an engineering factory, where he campaigned against redundancies, and later in a teaching role in Hackney, where he campaigned against school closures. He then went on to become invovled with the National Union of Teachers. This early involvement in activism laid the foundations for a lifelong commitment to equality and inclusion.

A pivotal moment came when Richard challenged the discrimination he faced as a disabled teacher. After winning a grievance case against a decision to target him for compulsory redeployment, he was seconded to look into the curriculum and disability.

From this point, Richard became a driving force in embedding disability equality into the curriculum and broader educational practice. Working with artist and activist Micheline Mason, Richard helped pioneer a new way of understanding disability in education. Together, they produced Disability Equality in the Classroom: A Human Rights Issue, which is widely regarded as the first publication to frame disability explicitly as an equality issue within education.

In 1996, Richard founded the charity Disability Equality in Education, supported by Comic Relief. Through initiatives like teaching resources and national training programmes, the organisation played a central role in embedding disability equality into schools and teacher education. He has also led landmark legal and policy efforts as Chair of the Alliance for Inclusive Education.

His influence has extended far beyond the UK. He served on the board of the European Disability Forum and later represented the UK disability movement at the United Nations during the development of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, a landmark international agreement that ensured disabled people had the same rights and freedoms as everyone else. He also founded World of Inclusion, a consultancy delivering training and advice on inclusive practice in more than 60 countries, and holds the position of General Secretary of the Commonwealth Disabled People’s Forum.

Alongside policy and education reform, Richard has run campaigns to change public perceptions about disabled people. This included a campaign called Invisible Children, run with Save the Children, to challenge that fact that there was very little imagery of disabled children in the public domain.

Richard’s contributions have been recognised with numerous honours, including being appointed and Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2021 for services to disability equality and inclusion, Doctor of the University by Open University in 2022, and King’s Alum of the Year in 2026.