Cùran is still hard at work building the Unseen Barriers website. Some sections may be missing or unfinished while the site is under construction, thank you for your patience!
About Us
The Unseen Barriers Foundation exists to challenge the hidden forces that prevent disabled people from accessing support, spaces, and safety. We are not here to negotiate slow improvements, we are here to disrupt, reframe, and rebuild. Our work is grounded in the Unseen Barriers Framework, a rights-based model developed through lived experience and academic analysis.
Our Mission
We will make distress visible. We will name the barriers others overlook. We will train, consult, design, and advocate in ways that centre disabled voices and demand systemic change. From festivals to frontline services, our goal is nothing short of transformation.
Impact Vision
Our work will create safer environments for disabled people. We will reduce missed appointments, increase trust in services, and confront the everyday systems that silence or shame distress. Our mascot Cùran, our storybooks, our public training, and our presence at events will not just raise awareness, they will change how people feel, act, and support one another.
Full Version
Who We Are
The Unseen Barriers Foundation is proudly based in Scotland and rooted in lived experience. We are disabled people, neurodivergent thinkers, trauma survivors, carers, creators, and children of struggle. We are not a corporate boardroom. We are not a token panel. We are not here to dress distress up in soft language and make it easier to ignore. We are here to name it, face it, and dismantle it. Together.
Founded by Shaun Gray, a disabled independent researcher and creator of the Unseen Barriers Framework, the Foundation was born from years of direct experience with exclusion, both personal and systemic. From missed appointments to emotional shutdowns to the shame of not being believed, Shaun built the framework not in abstraction, but in response to a lifetime of friction with systems that failed to listen. The Foundation is our way of making sure that story does not end there.
We are also a family project. Shaun’s partner Fiona, living with bipolar disorder and BPD, has shaped much of the insight behind our work on emotional exhaustion and sensory overload. Their child, who currently voices our mascot Cùran, has brought life and joy into our mission in ways we could never have predicted. That voice, both literal and symbolic, stands for every child who has ever shut down in silence and been labelled instead of supported.
We are governed by a small but fiercely committed board of trustees, with plans to expand. Our internal culture is proudly informal. We do not hold performative meetings for the sake of protocol. We value clarity, honesty, and action. We do not expect perfection, but we demand integrity. If you work with us, you are working alongside people who have lived it, not just learned it.
Our ethos is simple. We do not rank people by diagnostic label, mobility aid, or benefit eligibility. If distress has ever stopped you accessing something you needed, you are the reason we exist. And if you have never seen your story reflected in services before, you are why we built this Foundation.