Global Status Report on Disability and Development Prototype 2015 unedited version

5.2Monitoring and evaluation

At the national level, disability indicators can be used to assess the success of efforts for inclusive development. With this aim, countries may focus on establishing indicators to be collected regularly to assess in an inclusive manner the situation of persons with disabilities and the barriers they face, and to design disability specific indicators to capture progress in implementing various policies and programs aimed at inclusion and to evaluate in an inclusive manner their final impact. Most of these indicators will fall into one of these categories:

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  Indicators to monitor the wellbeing of people with disabilities as compared to people without disabilities, e.g. unemployment rate for persons with disabilities, school attendance for children with disabilities.
  
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  Indicators on accessibility and barriers faced by persons with disabilities, e.g. percentage of public buildings accessible for persons with disabilities; number of sign language interpreters available; percentage of persons with disabilities indicating discriminating prejudices as a reason for not getting a job.⁵⁷¹
  

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  simultaneously by disability and sex (to monitor girls and women with disabilities);
  
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  simultaneously by disability and age (to monitor children and older persons with disabilities);
  
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  simultaneously by disability and income groups (to monitor the poor with disabilities);
  
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  by type of disability (to monitor, among others, persons with mental and intellectual disabilities).
  

At the national level, several approaches to data and information collection can be used to obtain a picture of the participation and barriers faced by persons with disabilities and to provide data to assess progress towards the SDGs for persons with disabilities:

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  Adding short set of questions to existing censuses and national surveys, like Demographic Health Survey, Labour Force Surveys, Household Income and Expenditure Surveys, or any other national surveys that will serve as the basis for the SDG indicators. The Washington Group short set of questions have been developed with that aim. These questions will identify people who are at risk of being excluded because of functional difficulties. If gaps exist in the SDG indicators for people with and without these functional difficulties, then this is a sign that barriers are preventing people with disabilities from benefiting from economic development on an equal basis with their non-disabled peers. This approach is low cost as it requires only a modest addition of six questions to existing censuses or surveys.
  
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  Carrying out detailed national disability surveys, ideally every five years, to get a full picture of the situations of persons with disabilities. Examples for such surveys include the WHO Module Disability Survey. These surveys are essential to obtain quantitative data on the nature and extent of disability, the development outcomes for people with disabilities, and the barriers they face.
  
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  Conducting qualitative studies to understand the dynamics underlying how existing barriers affect the lives of people with disabilities, and to provide insights into how best to intervene to remove these barriers.
  
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  Incorporating disability information into Education Management Information Systems (EMIS).⁵⁷² EMIS’s are based on school censuses administered on an annual basis by ministries of education. These systems should not only identify children with disabilities, but also collect information on the accessibility of structures and materials and the training of teachers on educating children with special needs.
  
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  Monitoring children with disabilities by using disability questions appropriate to them. UNICEF and the Washington Group on Disability Statistics are currently developing disability questions for children.
  

Finally, in the current era of digitisation, persons with disabilities should benefit from the data revolution and the opportunities that such a revolution may provide in making them more visible. New technologies should be explored to identify ways to monitor the situation of persons with disabilities at a lower cost. These data should be freely available and accessible.