Rachel Hurst


Dr. Rachel Mary Rosalind Hurst CBE is the Director of Disability Awareness in Action, an international information/research/evidence network, run for and by disabled people.
She has served as the chair for a number of groups, and achieved a CBE in 2008.

Biography

Hurst was born in 1939 and went on to work as a teacher. Before she reached the age of 30, she woke one night to find herself paralysed, going on to be diagnosed with congenital myopathy. The condition lead her to become wheelchair bound in 1976, and she lost her teaching job.
After contacting Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation, she went on to join the Greenwich Association of Disabled People. Hurst would go on to become chair of the latter association in 1981, where she would help form a Centre for Independent Living and take over the Dial-a-Ride service for Greater London Council.
In 1992 while living in Hullavington, Wiltshire, Hurst and some other volunteers set up Disability Awareness in Action. Hurst became the director of the group, which is an international disability and human rights group working across 164 countries.
Hurst chaired Disabled Peoples' International's European Regional Committee and chaired the British Council of Organisations of Disabled People for a period in the 1980s. During the 1990s, she chaired a lobby group Rights Now.
Hurst was appointed an Officer of Order of the British Empire in 1995, and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2008 New Year Honours. In 2004, she was described as a "doyenne" of disability rights.