Disability facts and figures

There are many sources on the web that have disability statistics. We found the following at CSR Europe.

• The International Labour Organisation estimates that there are 610 million disabled people worldwide.

• Four hundred million disabled people live in the world's developing countries

• Disability is estimated to affect 10 per cent to 20 per cent of every country's population, a percentage that is expected to grow because of poor health care and nutrition early in life, growing elderly populations and violent civil conflicts.

• 39 million disabled people in Europe.

• 8.6 million people (aged 16 and over) self declare as disabled UK (15 per cent of the UK population).

• Only 8 per cent of disabled people in the UK use a wheelchair.

  (CSR Europe, ‘Disability: facts and figures’ (Accessed 30 July 2007))

• The Open University (OU) has a long history of encouraging and supporting disabled students. In 2004, The OU had 10,348 students who declared a disability. The figures for the different categories collected in September 2006 are shown in the table following. The last column gives the number as a percentage of the 9,782 students. (Both columns add up to more than 9,782 and 100 per cent as many students have more than one disability.)

The OU data are slightly different to the national figures for all disabled higher education students in the UK. The most recently available national figures are for 2004 and are given in the table below.