Global disability news and resources
This page lists the countries in Global with resources and recent highlights.
Countries
- International News
- Americas
- Asia-Pacific
- Eastern Europe and Central Asia
- Latin America and the Caribbean
- Middle East and North Africa
Recent Highlights
Stop work: Disability Debrief feature on the US aid freeze's devastating impact on disabled people:
’People with disabilities are impacted both as general beneficiaries of these programmes and also recipients of aid targeted directly towards them. Organisations responsible for service provision or advocacy for disabled people have been sent reeling, with many having to stop work and send staff home. Specialists see this as having “dreadful long term consequences” and even causing “multigenerational harm” to persons with disabilities and their families.’ (Feb, Disability Debrief)
Dataviz accessibility principles, demonstrated by the 2024 presidential election dashboards. (2024, Sarah L. Fossheim)
Migrants With Disabilities Facing Dual Neglect:
“Migrants with disabilities have mostly been ignored, making it difficult for them to cope with adverse circumstances associated with migration. Some migrants have acquired an impairment in their place of origin, yet decide to take the risk in search of better living conditions. Others may develop an impairment during their journey, such as getting injured while crossing jungle and desert areas, being chased and detained by law enforcement authorities or falling off of cargo trains they were travelling in.” (2024, OHCHR)
Their mission? To mould us. The persistence of segregation in education, from its colonial roots to now. Plus a love-hate relationship with education. (2024, Disability Debrief)
Unequal partnership Funders should support the disability movement more directly: analysis of recent research that reveals grassroots organisations of persons with disabilities are funded as “indirectly as possible”. (2024, Disability Debrief)
UN Flagship Report On Disability And Development 2024 An important overview of available evidence on disability:
“The report indicates that persons with disabilities are often left behind in the efforts to achieve Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, with wide gaps persisting between persons with and without disabilities, particularly on food security, health, and access to energy and ICT. Considering COVID-19, the report assesses the different ways the pandemic impacted progress towards achieving these goals and identifies concrete steps forward that is inclusive for all.” (2024, UNDESA)
The Charter of Solfagnano G7 commitment on disability inclusion:
“We strongly reaffirm our commitment to show leadership and ambition, in line with the UNCRPD, and to collaborate, towards its full implementation with all international institutional partners representing persons with disabilities, associations, third- sector organisations, local communities and the private sector that intends to support the recognition of the right of all to full and effective participation in the civil, social, political, economic and cultural life of our countries.” (2024, G7 Italia 2024)
Discuss, curse and flirt Debrief discussion of signed communication in Nepal and International Sign. (2024, Disability Debrief)
Borg Diem words created by disabled people about disability experiences. (2024, Including Disability)
What went wrong? Exclusive coverage on the Debrief of the crisis at the International Disability Alliance and exploration of the changes needed in disability leadership. (2024, Disability Debrief)
Paralympic Paradoxes Debrief feature on the tensions between Para sport and disability advocacy:
“Disability rights are about levelling the playing field without any exceptions. Sports are about fairness of competition that leads to winners and losers.” (2024, Disability Debrief)
New ILO working paper exposes significant ‘disability wage gap’. “Higher unemployment rates, lower earnings and a tendency towards self-employment characterize the world-of-work experience of many people with disabilities:”
“The paper, which includes new data, finds that those with disabilities who are working are paid 12 per cent less per hour than other employees, on average, and that three-quarters of this gap – 9 per cent – cannot be explained by differences in education, age and type of work. In low and lower middle-income countries this disability wage gap is much larger, at 26 per cent, and almost half cannot be explained by socio-demographic differences.” (2024, ILO)
Localization and organisations of persons with disabilities: case studies on inclusion in humanitarian funding. One of the key takeaways is:
“Local OPD funding landscape is done as ‘indirectly as possible’. Donors prefer to fund project delivery INGO intermediaries. These intermediaries channel their funding to national umbrella OPDs/federations that then channel funding to other OPDs who are engaged to deliver smaller bits of the project. The amount that trickles from donors to smaller OPDs is small as huge chunks of budgets are retained by the INGOs and national OPD associations.” (2024, GLAD)
ChatGPT is biased against resumes with credentials that imply a disability — but it can improve:
‘researchers found that ChatGPT consistently ranked resumes with disability-related honors and credentials — such as the “Tom Wilson Disability Leadership Award” — lower than the same resumes without those honors and credentials. But when researchers customized the tool with written instructions directing it not to be ableist, the tool reduced this bias for all but one of the disabilities tested.’ (2024, UW News)
How People with Disabilities Use the Web updated resource to help “developers, designers, content creators, and others understand the reasons behind creating accessible digital products”. (2024, W3C Web Accessibility Initiative)