UK Disability History Month 2020 runs until Friday 18th December. The annual initiative seeks to highlight the struggle of disabled people for equality and human rights.
It’s a fitting time, then, to explore the UK Data Service’s collection for datasets relating to disability.
A good place to start is the Life Opportunities Survey (LOS), a large scale longitudinal survey of disability in Great Britain, which ran from June 2009 to September 2014. It is the first major ONS social survey to explore disability in terms of the social barriers to participation that people experience. The survey compares the experiences of disabled people with those of nondisabled people, assessing the extent of additional disadvantage experienced by people with impairments due to the range of social barriers, discrimination or lack of support, assistance and adjustments.
For a breakdown of the number of disabled people by area or household, you can use the Census, which has a variable asking respondents about their long-term health or whether they have a disability. For Northern Ireland and Scotland, there’s an additional variable that is broken down by condition type.
Each year, the UK Disability History Month has a theme and this year’s theme is access. The term access refers to a disabled person’s right to have equal access to buildings, roads, transportation and other indoor and outdoor facilities, including schools, housing, medical facilities and workplaces. It also encompasses a right to equal access to information, communications and other services, including electronic services and emergency services.
For disabled people access is now a fundamental human right, as is gaining participation on an equal level with others, regardless of impairments. Disabled people have struggled for many years to change society’s lived physical and information environment.
An overview of this historical struggle can be gained through the Papers of the Disability Alliance, 1973-1998, which are held by the UK Data Service. The Disability Alliance is a national federation of more than 250 organisations of and for disabled people, who joined together to press for the introduction of a Comprehensive Disability Income Scheme. These papers provide an insight into the running of the organisation, the development of social policy on disablement and the course of political activism on disablement issues from the 1970s to the mid 1990s. This collection is not currently digitised and is available as a hard copy only.
Examples of possible analyses relating to disability using datasets held by the UK Data Service are offered by the Office of National Statistics (ONS).
For a snapshot of disability and employment in the UK, the labour market statistics found in the Labour Force Survey and Annual Population Survey are great resources for researchers. Data from last year shows that roughly half of disabled people were in employment between 2013 and 2019 (53.2%) compared with just over four out of five non-disabled people (81.8%) (Labour Force Survey, LFS). Working disabled men were more likely to be self-employed (20.6%) than non-disabled men (17.5%) while no significant difference was seen between disabled and non-disabled women (Annual Population Survey, APS, 2019).
Evidence from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) reveals some disturbing statistics about disability and crime. In the year ending March 2019, the Crime Survey for England and Wales found that almost 1 in 4 (23.1%) disabled adults aged 16 years and over experienced crime (including fraud and computer misuse), compared with 1 in 5 (20.7%) non-disabled adults. Over the same time period, around 1 in 7 (14.1%) disabled adults aged 16 to 59 years experienced domestic abuse compared with 1 in 20 (5.4%) non-disabled adults; disabled women were more than twice as likely to have experienced domestic abuse (17.3%) than non-disabled women (7.0%).
A more positive view can be found when looking at disability and social participation. Analysis of the Community Life Survey found that in the year ending March 2018, disabled people were more likely to have been involved in civic participation (45.5%) than non-disabled people (38.4%), and as likely to have been involved in a group, club or organisation (67.9%) as non-disabled people (71.9%).
Citations for datasets mentioned in this article include:
Department for Culture, Media and Sport. (2019). Community Life Survey, 2017-2018. [data collection]. UK Data Service. SN: 8478, http://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-8478-1
Office for National Statistics, Social Survey Division. (2020). Annual Population Survey, January – December, 2019. [data collection]. 4th Edition. UK Data Service. SN: 8632, http://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-8632-4
Office for National Statistics, Social Survey Division. (2016). Life Opportunities Survey, 2009-2014: Secure Access. [data collection]. UK Data Service. SN: 8076, http://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-8076-1
Townsend, P. (2018). Papers of the Disability Alliance, 1973-1998. [data collection]. UK Data Service. SN: 853290, http://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-853290