1000s of photographs of over 80 years of people with disabilities working towards achieving their goals for life are now available online.

Queen Elizabeth’s Foundation for Disabled People (QEF) has now made public its historical photographs in an easily searchable, online archive.

These pictures tell a story of disability issues in Britain from before the Second World War and show examples of how people with disabilities trained for work and independent living, as well as how HM Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother supported them and played a role to change attitudes in society.

The pictures are available for researchers, historians, campaigners, other charities, and anyone who has an interest in this area to view and use in a non-commercial way, or for media outlets, publications and businesses to use subject to some terms and conditions (as detailed below).

This online archive has come about as QEF has been undertaking a large archiving and education project as part of its 80th anniversary reflections. The project is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and is designed to widen knowledge and understanding of the charity’s work and to explore changing attitudes towards disability.

In addition to the digital image archive, the project involves digitising the archive of film reels and video, collecting oral histories from people that worked, trained and lived at QEF. These will be available online soon.

Additionally, QEF is working with a professionally led company of disabled performers to take a fun and educational show that explores disability issues in an accessible way to fifteen schools in Surrey. There will also be a travelling exhibition that will visit ten towns in Surrey from February to May 2016, and a large exhibition that will include large pieces of assistive equipment and mobility vehicles, to be held at the gallery@oxo, Oxo Tower Wharf from 19 – 25 April 2016.

The photographic archive includes pictures from the 1930s to the present day. The different albums are sorted by decade and also by theme. Themes include trainees at work, including as welding, gardening, electrical work, switchboard operating, and using early computer equipment, trainees at leisure, QEF buildings for those interested in architecture, and celebrity and Royal visits.

HM Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother was patron and visited the charity numerous times, her first and last visit being over 57 years apart. There are over 100 rare photographs of her visits in the archive.

Also, every week QEF will be publishing a Storify timeline about QEF’s history. This will be released by decades, and arranged by theme, so keep an eye out for these on QEF’s social media channels:

You can view the online archive here: qef.org.uk/heritagepic