I’m always on the hunt for global, national, or local data to give context a topic. Recently, I’ve had on my to-do list finding data to provide context to the various accessibility projects we have under development. I came across the Disability Statistics website, an online resource for U.S. disability statistics managed by the Institute on Employment and Disability at Cornell University. They pull data from various sources, including:
To say that it saved me a ton of work is the understatement of this Polar Vortex. In a few short clicks, I was able to find that as of 2017:
- In the US, 40,714,800 (12.7%) out of the total 321,823,700 population had a hearing, visual, cognitive, ambulatory, self-care, or independent living disability.
- Drilling down to the various disability categories for the 785,400 working-age adults (18-64) without a high school diploma residing in IL (a target demographic for most adult education programs):
- 127,235 (16.2%) had one or more disabilities from the categories above
- 19,635 (2.5%) had a hearing disability (e.g., deaf or serious difficulty hearing)
- 25,918 (3.3%) had a visual disability (e.g., blind or serious difficulty seeing even when wearing glasses)
- 62,046 (7.9%) had a cognitive disability (e.g., because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition, had a serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions)
- 64,402 (8.2%) had an ambulatory disability (e.g., a serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs)
For anyone looking for data that can be easily broken down to provide context to a problem, need, opportunity, etc., you know a data find like this is pure gold. Thank you to the good folks at Cornell’s Institute on Employment and Disability for providing this valuable service.