Sue Maynard Campbell was a lifelong campaigner for the rights of disabled people in the UK. She was managing director of Equal Ability CIC, chair of the Group for Solicitors with Disabilities and and a member of the Not Dead Yet UK network which fights against the assumption that disabled people’s lives are not worth living.

Susan Jane Maynard was born in Enfield in 1952, daughter of Rupert and Mary Maynard. Her grandfather, Charles Gordon Maynard, was the inventor of the wine gum — a fact of which she was very proud. She attended Godolphin and Latimer School in London but transferred to Florence Treloar School in Hampshire, a segregated school for disabled girls (she suffered from spinal muscular atrophy), during her O level year. Despite this interruption to her schooling, she went on to study at the University of Nottingham, where students provided her with personal care support — a first for the university. She qualified as a lawyer in 1979, at a time when it was difficult even for nondisabled women to enter the profession.

Maynard Campbell — she retained her former husband’s surname — practised both in partnership and on her own in Surrey until 1986, when she moved to Yorkshire. In 1992 she set up Equal Ability, a disability equality training and consultancy company, with her sister Alice Maynard. She continued to run the company — one of the best-known disability companies in the UK — until her death.

One of Maynard Campbell’s chief roles was with the Association of Disabled Professionals, first as honorary secretary under the chairmanship of Sir Peter Large and later as chair herself. During her time with the association she helped to set up the British Council of Organisations of Disabled People (now UKDPC), published booklets of case studies of successful disabled professionals designed to show disabled people that entry into the professions was possible, and initiated the disabled entrepreneurs’ network.

As chair of the Group for Solicitors with Disabilities she encouraged many disabled solicitors to advance in their profession. Her last important contribution was to organise a hugely successful conference in February this year.

She had a particular passion for supporting organisations led by disabled people, and much of her work in Equal Ability focused on building up disabled people’s organisations. She worked closely with Dial Wakefield, her local disability organisation, during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Recently she had been working with the Department of Health on the implementation of one of the recommendations in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit report, Improving the Life Chances of Disabled People, relating to local organisations of disabled people.

Maynard Campbell is survived by her partner, Steve Catlin.

Sue Maynard Campbell, MBE, managing director of Equal Ability CIC, was born on December 20, 1952. She died from a heart attack after pneumonia on May 21, 2008, aged 55