The Unseen Barriers Framework
Concise Version
The barriers we highlight cannot always be seen. Stairs, steps, signage, these are visible. Others are felt: shame, fatigue, sensory overload, panic. The Unseen Barriers Framework was developed by Shaun Gray and created to name the ways in which many disabled people are still excluded or harmed, even when "access" has technically been provided. It also represents what Shaun considers the beginning of a third wave of disability theory, one rooted in lived distress, and focused on what has been historically unacknowledged.
This framework introduces four core barriers:
Scent Distress
Distress caused by exposure to scents such as cleaning products, perfume, body odour or air fresheners. For some people, these are triggering enough to cause nausea, anxiety, panic or sensory shutdown.
Communication Management Distress
Distress caused by the mental labour of preparing for, executing or recovering from a service interaction. This includes masking, over-preparing, scripting, post-encounter rumination or spirals.
Cognitive Layering Distress
Distress from the stacking of thoughts, instructions or information that results in panic, failure to complete, or eventual disengagement.
Perception-Based Distress
Distress caused by how one is seen, interpreted, or disbelieved. This can stem from having an invisible condition, from mismatched assumptions about disability, or from fear of being judged.
These forms of distress are often uncounted and unnamed. The Framework names them so that institutions can no longer say, "We did not know."
Full Version
The Unseen Barriers Framework is a rights-based conceptual model developed by Shaun Gray. It began as a desk-based academic study but has since evolved into a working theory that underpins the mission of The Unseen Barriers Foundation. The Framework provides new language for understanding disabled people’s experiences of exclusion. It is grounded in lived experience and distress, rather than architecture, ramps or signage. It does not focus on physical access alone, but on the emotional and sensory terrain that disabled people must navigate in order to use services.
It is not a diagnostic tool. It is a conceptual intervention. It does not claim to assess impairments or replicate traditional models of disability. Instead, it builds on the gaps left by existing approaches. It names what has too often been dismissed as excuses or oversensitivity. The Unseen Barriers Framework represents the emergence of what Shaun defines as a third wave of disability theory. One rooted in trauma, fatigue, sensory overload, and the consequences of enduring spaces not built with you in mind.
The framework currently identifies four core barriers. Each can appear on its own, but often they compound and interact:
Scent Distress
Triggered by strong or lingering smells. This includes perfume, smoke, food, cleaning fluids, air fresheners or even body scent. For some people this causes nausea, dizziness, sensory shutdown or panic. These experiences are often dismissed as phobias or irritability, when in fact they may indicate an access issue with real consequences.
Communication Management Distress
Relates to the labour of planning, executing, or recovering from an interaction. Many disabled people experience stress not in the appointment itself, but in everything around it: pre-emptive scripting, masking, controlling body language, reviewing every word said. Often the exhaustion that follows is enough to deter further engagement.
Cognitive Layering Distress
When too many steps, requests, documents, or demands are layered onto someone already navigating distress. This might include form filling, transport coordination, phone anxiety, deadlines or follow-up actions. When the layers become too much, the system collapses, and the person disengages.
Perception-Based Distress
The distress caused by fear of how you are seen. This might stem from having an invisible impairment, from not being believed, from being scrutinised, or from being seen to take up space or time. This is not about what is said. It is about the silence. The look. The moment of being clocked. The fear that your presence is being judged.
These barriers are not abstract. They are real, felt, and measurable through disengagement, avoidance, drop-off and distress. The Unseen Barriers Framework demands that we stop asking only who entered the building, and start asking who had to leave.
It is a third wave of disability theory that insists access is not just a door. It is what happens on the way to it.