Equity is a guiding theme of the proposals in the Open Working Group outcome document on the global development agenda post-2015. The report explicitly recognizes people with disabilities in 5 of the 17 goals, including education. In order to effectively monitor and evaluate progress towards achieving this vision we need timely, high quality data on both people with disabilities and the environmental barriers they face. In general, this has not been possible in most countries. In fact, until recently there were no generally agreed upon questions for identifying people with disabilities that had been tested widely in developing countries.
Fortunately, this situation is changing. Drawing upon the framework of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, the UN Statistical Commission’s
Washington Group on Disability Statistics (WG), comprising representatives from dozens of national statistical offices across the globe, has developed and tested a
short set of six questions for identifying people with disabilities.
The main aim is to include these questions as a regular part of every national census and survey – for example, household income and expenditure surveys, labour force surveys, demographic and health surveys. This will allow all currently constructed indicators to be disaggregated by disability status. If accomplished, this will be a major achievement, allowing us to produce timely, high quality indicators to monitor progress on the post-2015 priorities.
