RE: Statistics on accessibility

Hi All,

Thanks, Christophe, for those excellent statistical resources.  
Some recent US findings are at:

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/disable.htm
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/disability/disability.html

But none of these figures, and as Christophe notes, none of the 
other national or international stats go where *we* want them to 
go: a unified, cross-cultural definition of disability that can 
be used to identify people who have difficulty or are unable to 
use specific technology products and services.

That is, we'd like to know more about how many people would have 
trouble seeing text in specific color and contrast combinations, 
or using a mouse to hit a 5 mm. square screen target, or hearing 
an alerting tone at 3kHz.  These statistics would be useful for 
both technical and "business case development" reasons.

I would be interested in discussing these needs with others so as
to be able to present specific requests to EU, UN, US, and other 
disability statistics gathering programs.  I will be at AAATE, but
we don't have to wait until then.

If you are interested, please reply to me directly (so as to keep
this list on track).  If you can host a separate list, please offer
to do so in your reply.

***********
Jim Tobias
Inclusive Technologies
tobias@inclusive.com
+732.441.0831 v/tty
www.inclusive.com
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Christophe Strobbe
> Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2005 6:21 AM
> To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Statistics on accessibility
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> At 15:44 4/07/2005, Alice Good wrote:
> 
> >Does anyone know any sites that shows statistics on the 
> different types 
> >of disabilities affecting accessibility, including the older 
> >population?  I have figures relating to the UK but can't 
> seem to find 
> >much depicting the worldwide situation.
> 
> Earlier, I responded to Alice instead of to the list. I have 
> found some more references for Europe but not for the whole 
> world. Gathering supranational data would be difficult 
> because the criteria for determining disability are not the 
> same in all countries (see "Definitions of Disability in 
> Europe: A Comparative Analysis" at 
> http://europa.eu.int/comm/employment_social/index/complete_rep
> ort_en.pdf,
> 239 pages!).
> You might find some world-wide demographics on UN Enable 
> (http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/enable/); I haven't checked that site.
> The OECD Statistics Portal
> (http://www.oecd.org/statsportal/0,2639,en_2825_293564_1_1_1_1
> _1,00.html)
> links to, among other things, OECD Health Data that are kept 
> up to date 
> (http://www.oecd.org/document/16/0,2340,en_2825_495642_2085200
> _1_1_1_1,00.html),
> but they don't seem to gather data on disabilities. The page 
> with links to "Social Policy Related Sites" 
> (http://www.oecd.org/document/10/0,2340,en_2649_201185_2084362
> _1_1_1_1,00.html)
> may be more useful.
> Eurostat
> (http://epp.eurostat.cec.eu.int/pls/portal/url/page/PGP_ESTAT_
> HOME_PAGE/PGE_HP_DYNAMIC)
> has figures on "disability free life expectancy" but I am not 
> aware of any figures on specific disabilities.
> The European Union has data on "prevalence of any chronic illness" 
> (http://europa.eu.int/comm/health/ph_information/dissemination
> /echi/echi_2_en.htm#21)
> but these do not specify any specific disabilities.
> You may also wish to consult the report on "The State of 
> Mental Health in the European Union" 
> (http://europa.eu.int/comm/health/ph_projects/2001/monitoring/
> fp_monitoring_2001_frep_06_en.pdf).
> The report "Included in Society: Results and Recommendations 
> of the European Research Initiative on Community-Based 
> Residential Alternatives for Disabled People" 
> (http://europa.eu.int/comm/employment_social/index/socinc_en.p
> df) provides data on people with disabilities placed in large 
> residential institutions.
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Earlier message:
> 
> I don't know of any worldwide statistics that can be 
> attributed to a reliable source. I expected to find them on 
> the web site of the World Health Organization 
> (http://www.who.int/en/) but you can search forever on that 
> site. The United Nations Statistics Division was going to 
> start collecting statistics this year 
> (http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/sconcerns/disability/)
> , but the data I have found so far lump all disabilities together.
> For Europe, you can find figures in "Access-Ability: Making 
> technology more useable by people with disabilities" by John 
> Gill (2004) on the Tiresias website (see 
> http://www.tiresias.org/guidelines/access-ability/Access-Abili
> ty.htm#demo;
> a link to a PDF version is available at 
> http://www.tiresias.org/guidelines/access-ability/). The 
> table with percentages contains the same numbers as the table 
> for the UK at 
> http://www.tiresias.org/guidelines/demographics.htm, but the 
> percentage of blind persons in the UK is apparently 0.4%, as 
> opposed to 0.1% for Europe.
> 
> For the US, an older reference is
> Laplante, M.P. (1991). The demographics of disability. In 
> West, J. (Ed.), The Americans with Disabilities Act: From 
> policy to practice. New York: 
> Milbank Memorial Fund.
> More recent figures should be available in the Harris Survey 
> of Americans with Disabilities 
> (http://www.nod.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.viewPage&pageID=31).
> (Should you be interested in American Catholics (a minority 
> in the US, as in the UK), there are more recent data at
> http://www.ncpd.org/demographics%20of%20disability.htm.)
> 
> 
> Some people have argued that demographics/statistics should 
> be used <ith caution when making a business case for 
> accessibility. See e.g.  Kevin Carey's speech "e-Europe and 
> e-Accessibility: the user perspective" 
> (http://forum.europa.eu.int/irc/DownLoad/kYesA3JEmZG0yX2QJD9FI
> uHx0tNHjrYqSpi_SRuqJ-C12QTu_wRp12b1jtru5Rm9wVfNR-RN2IZ3rIP/TCA
> M-CAPD%2009%20eAccessibility_user_perspective.htm)
> and his "Notes on the demographics of disability and the www" 
> (http://www.humanity.org.uk/articles/pr_demographics.shtml).
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Christophe Strobbe
> 
> 
> 
> 
> >Many thanks
> >
> >Alice
> 
> --
> Christophe Strobbe
> K.U.Leuven - Departement of Electrical Engineering - Research 
> Group on Document Architectures Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 - 
> 3001 Leuven-Heverlee - BELGIUM
> tel: +32 16 32 85 51
> http://www.docarch.be/ 
> 
>

Received on Thursday, 14 July 2005 11:57:38 UTC