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The Washington Group Questions on Disability are rapidly emerging as the preferred data collection methodology by the global community for national data collection efforts on disability. However, more and more development and humanitarian actors are now using the methodology in their own data collection efforts. This is beyond the original purpose of the questions, which was to generate usable data for governments. Leonard Cheshire and Humanity & Inclusion, two international charities focussed on disability and inclusion, have worked together to share learnings of recent research studies. These studies aim to understand how the Washington Group Questions (WGQ) have been used by development and humanitarian actors and the impact of using the methodology. This summary report outlines the key findings, analysis and conclusions about the application of the Washington Group Questions in a range of contexts. The report concludes with a number of recommendations for different stakeholders.

The Disability Data Portal provides a snapshot of the data globally available on people with disabilities in 40 countries. The portal also identifies where there are gaps in the current body of data. 

The portal was designed for the Global Disability Summit, held on 24 July 2018, and focusses on data relating to four thematic areas: inclusive education, stigma and discrimination, technology and innovation, and economic empowerment. 

The portal presents key development indicators relevant to the Summit themes, mostly drawn from the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), along with others relevant to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)

Humanity & Inclusion (HI) and iMMAP conducted a study concerned with the lack of disability data in the Syria crisis context,  which aimed to:

• Provide statistically reliable prevalence of disability as well as disability disaggregated data indicators on access to services.
• Increase understanding of the situation of Syrian refugees with disabilities and their households, compared to their peers without disabilities, in relation to the access to services including education, and key barriers experienced in accessing these services.
• Recommend inclusive actions to be prioritized by humanitarian actors.

The study conducted a literature review, quantitative data collection as well as qualitative data collection. Quantitative data was collected from 2,495 persons of randomly sampled 506 households in the urban setting in Bar Elias as well as Informal Tented Settlements (ITS) in Bar Elias and Arsal in December 2017. Fourteen Key Informant Interviews (KII) were also conducted in December 2017 to elicit deeper insights on the educational situation of children with and without disabilities.

"In recognizing the need for a set of questions that would produce internationally comparable data on children, the Washington Group formed a subgroup in 2009 that is chaired by the National Statistical Office of Italy (ISTAT). UNICEF joined the subgroup in 2011.

The first main activity of the subgroup was the development of a short set of questions to reflect current thinking on child functioning for inclusion in censuses and surveys. The new module uses the ICF-CY as the conceptual framework and relies on a functional approach to measuring disability.

The Washington Group/UNICEF Module on Child Functioning, finalized in 2016, covers children between 2 and 17 years of age and assesses functional difficulties in different domains including hearing, vision, communication/comprehension, learning, mobility and emotions. To better reflect the degree of functional difficulty, each area is assessed against a rating scale. The purpose is to identify the subpopulation of children who are at greater risk than other children of the same age or who are experiencing limited participation in an unaccommodating environment. The set of questions is intended for use in national household surveys and censuses"

The module is being translated into multiple languages. Supporting documentation, including a concept note, tabulation plan, templates for reporting, guidelines for interviewers and training materials are also available.

The European Disability Forum (EDF) presents this position paper in response to the draft report of EUROSTAT on the European Union (EU) – Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) indicators circulated on 21st March to civil society organisations. The 2030 Agenda adopted by the United Nations in New York has 11 references to persons with disabilities and the SDGs have 19 references, including the technical ask to disaggregate data by disability.

However, EUROSTAT has overlooked persons with disabilities in its latest indicators draft. Now there is an opportunity to ensure this gap is filled and for the EU to include disability related indicators in line with the 2030 Agenda and the UN Convention on the Rights of persons with disabilities (UN CRPD).

The European Commission (EC) has a legal obligation under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) to promote, protect, and ensure the full enjoyment of human rights by persons with disabilities. The EC is also legally bound to ensure that persons with disabilities enjoy full equality under the law. EUROSTAT has also the technical capacity to measure the inclusion of persons with disabilities in its approach to the SDGs, and in this paper we outline why and how this could be done. Here are four guiding recommendations: 

• The systematic disaggregation of data by disability
• The insertion of the SDGs disability indicators in the EU SDGs indicators
• The provision of leadership from the EU in the application of the obligations under the UN CRPD in the context of the SDGs 
• The participation of persons with disabilities throughout the process

A video highlighting the critical importance of collecting data on child functioning, its feasibility and its powerful results. It addresses a new series of questions put together by UNICEF/Washington Group on Disability Statistics that go beyond labels and diagnoses to explore children’s actual experiences and the difficulties that they encounter in performing daily activities.

And every child is entitled to equal opportunity to realize their full potential. So say the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

But the hard truth is that millions of children with disabilities are deprived of opportunity.

An introduction to the set of 6 questions devised by the Washington Group on Disability Statistics to collect statistics on disability is given. The short set of questions was designed primarily for a census. It has one question for each of 6 domains of functioning: vision, hearing, mobility, communication, self care and cognition. There are 4 categories (no difficulty-cannot do). The questions were validated by testing in various countries. 

"More than one billion people worldwide are estimated to be living with a disability. A significant proportion of them lives in Sub-Saharan Africa where they are reported to be at increased risk of HIV. However, quantitative evidence on this remains scarce. A systematic review and a meta-analysis of the risk of HIV infection among people with disabilities living in Sub-Saharan Africa were undertaken. We searched all published or unpublished studies and national surveys reporting HIV prevalence among adults with disabilities living in Sub-Saharan Africa between 2000 and 2013. The risk ratio (RR) of HIV infection in people with disabilities versus people without disabilities was estimated through a random-effects meta-analysis. Of the 12,252 references screened, 13 studies were selected. HIV prevalence varied widely across studies from 1.1% to 29%. Pooled RRs of HIV infection in people with disabilities compared to the general population were 1.31 (1.02–1.69) overall; 1.16 (0.71–1.87) among people with mental illness or intellectual disabilities and 1.07 (0.58–1.95) among people with hearing disabilities. This meta-analysis provides evidence that people with disabilities do not have a lower risk of HIV when compared to the general population, and that women with disabilities are especially affected. A clear increasing gradient in the risk of HIV according to gender and disability status was also observed. The important heterogeneity across studies and their varying quality warrant a closer look at the intersection between disability and HIV. Additional studies with more systematic approaches and with higher-quality methodologies are required to further address this knowledge gap"

AIDS Care : Psychological and Socio-medical Aspects of HIV/AIDS, Volume 26, Issue 12

DOI: 10.1080/09540121.2014.936820

“The goal of this literary review is to report on existing knowledge about applied research on the African continent, regarding the living conditions of people with disabilities, poverty, violence and sexual abuse especially regarding children and women with disabilities, community-based rehabilitation and employment”