About one in six people worldwide has a significant disability, and inaccessible buildings, services, schools and workplaces, together with discrimination and the extra costs of disability, still leave many of them poorer, less healthy and less often employed than others.
Updated October 14, 2026. Written from the sources listed below, not independently peer-reviewed.
Out of every 100 persons with disabilities worldwide, how many are in employment?
1.3 billion
People with a significant disability
About 16% of the world population, or one person in six. Modelled WHO estimate published in its December 2022 Global report on health equity for persons with disabilities.
Data year 2022. Source: World Health Organization, 2023
27%
Employment rate of persons with disabilities
Employment-to-population ratio across 90 countries (2021 or latest year), against 56% for persons without disabilities. Survey data from a limited set of countries.
Data year 2021. Source: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2024
2.5 billion
People who need assistive products
People who need at least one assistive product such as a wheelchair, hearing aid, glasses or communication device. Access ranges from as little as 3% in some low-income countries to 90% in some high-income countries.
Data year 2022. Source: World Health Organization, 2024
Global estimates of the share of persons with severe disabilities who received any disability-related cash benefit, as reported in the UN Disability and Development Report 2024 (based on ILO social protection data). Only two comparable points are reported; coverage is lowest in Africa and South Asia.
The UN's 2024 assessment found that only five indicators, linked to five SDG targets, appeared to be on track for persons with disabilities. Progress was insufficient for 30% of targets, and for 14% the target had been missed or progress had stalled or reversed. For about half of the targets there was not enough data broken down by disability to judge progress at all.
In 33 countries and areas with data (2018 or latest year), 80% of persons with disabilities were multidimensionally poor, compared with 60% of persons without disabilities. Standard income poverty rates understate the gap because they ignore the extra costs of living with a disability.
Source: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2024Women with disabilities are employed less often than men with disabilities: the average employment-to-population ratio is 23% for women and 34% for men. Close to half of young people with disabilities aged 15 to 24 are not in employment, education or training, twice the rate of their peers.
Source: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 202411% of children with disabilities of primary school age are out of school, and the share rises to 32% at upper secondary age. Persons with disabilities are seven times more likely than others to lack health care when they need it.
Source: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2024Persons with disabilities face twice the risk of conditions such as depression, asthma, diabetes, stroke and obesity, and find inaccessible, unaffordable transport 15 times more of a barrier than people without disabilities.
Source: World Health Organization, 2023Instead of one “percent solved” score, DO GOOD rates three separate dimensions. A problem can have mature solutions that still reach too few people. These ratings are an editorial reading of the sources on this page, not a measured index.
Has the situation improved in the real world?
LowGaps of more than 20 percentage points between persons with and without disabilities persist in multidimensional poverty and employment, and only 27% of persons with disabilities are employed, against 56% of others.
How mature and validated are the available solutions?
ModerateAccessibility standards, inclusive education, assistive technology and disability benefits are well established and backed by an international treaty. Evidence on which approaches raise employment and reduce poverty at scale in low-income settings is much thinner.
How widely are effective solutions actually used?
LowProven measures reach few of the people who need them: access to assistive products is as low as 3% in some low-income countries, and in 2020 only 34% of persons with severe disabilities received any disability cash benefit.
Data on persons with disabilities have improved, but only half of the SDG targets have enough disaggregated data to assess progress, and many comparisons rest on surveys from a few dozen countries in different years.
Laws and benefits are slowly expanding: disability benefit coverage rose from 27% in 2016 to 34% in 2020. But progress was insufficient for 30% of SDG targets and had stalled or reversed for 14%.
An estimated 1.3 billion people, about 16% of the world's population, live with a significant disability. Disability arises when a long-term impairment meets barriers in the world around a person: steps without a ramp, information that is not available in sign language, Braille or plain language, schools and employers that do not adapt, and attitudes that assume persons with disabilities cannot learn, work or decide for themselves. The consequences add up over a lifetime. Persons with disabilities are less likely to finish school and to have a job, more likely to be poor, and face higher health risks; some die up to 20 years earlier than people without disabilities.
The barriers fall hardest on those who face other disadvantages too. Women with disabilities are less often employed than men with disabilities and are two to four times more likely to experience intimate partner violence than other women. Young people with disabilities are twice as likely as their peers to be neither in work nor in education or training. Living with a disability also costs more, for assistive products, transport, care and health services, so households with a disabled member can be poor even when their income looks adequate. The UN's most recent assessment found that, for persons with disabilities, only five indicators linked to the Sustainable Development Goals appeared to be on track.
International law and statistics treat disability not as a medical condition alone but as the result of an impairment interacting with barriers in society. That shapes how it is counted and how inclusion is tracked:
The human-rights definition
The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) describes persons with disabilities as those with long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments that, in interaction with various barriers, may hinder their full and equal participation in society. It obliges states parties to remove those barriers rather than to change the person.
Functional difficulty questions
Censuses and household surveys increasingly use the Washington Group questions, which ask how much difficulty a person has with seeing, hearing, walking, remembering or concentrating, self-care and communicating. People reporting at least 'a lot of difficulty' in one area are usually counted as having a disability. Countries still use different questions and cut-offs, which limits comparisons.
Global prevalence estimates
WHO's figure of 1.3 billion people with a significant disability is a modelled global estimate, not a count. National survey rates vary widely, partly because of differences in survey design, age structure and how severe a difficulty must be to count.
Gaps between people with and without disabilities
Inclusion is tracked by comparing outcomes, such as school attendance, employment, poverty or access to health care, for people with and without disabilities in the same country. The SDGs call for data to be broken down by disability status, but for about half of the targets there is not yet enough such data to assess progress.
What works
Building codes, transport standards and web accessibility rules require new buildings, vehicles, stations and digital services to be usable by everyone. Many public places have improved: in 2022 about 70% of transit stations and bus stations and 66% of town halls were reported accessible to wheelchair users.
Limits
Standards are often not enforced and cover only part of the environment. 98% of the top one million websites do not meet international web accessibility guidelines, and only 48% of NGO offices were reported accessible to wheelchair users.
What works
Disability benefits and social protection that cover the extra costs of disability reduce poverty and support independent living. Coverage of persons with severe disabilities by disability cash benefits rose from 27% in 2016 to 34% in 2020.
Limits
Two in three persons with severe disabilities still receive no such benefit. Extra costs vary widely, between 10% and 99% of household income in 40 countries studied, and benefit levels rarely reflect them.
What works
Teaching children with and without disabilities in the same schools, with accessible buildings and materials, trained teachers and individual support, helps children with disabilities stay in school and prepares all pupils for an inclusive society.
Limits
11% of children with disabilities of primary age and 32% of upper-secondary age are out of school. Inclusive schooling needs sustained funding for teachers, support staff and accessible buildings, which many school systems lack.
What works
Wheelchairs, hearing aids, glasses, prosthetics and communication aids let people study, work and take part in community life. Including them in national health and social protection schemes, with trained staff for fitting and repair, widens access.
Limits
More than 2.5 billion people need at least one assistive product, yet access is as low as 3% in some low-income countries, and the need is expected to rise to 3.5 billion people by 2050.
What works
Laws that ban disability discrimination in hiring and require reasonable accommodation, such as adapted equipment or flexible hours, together with vocational training and support services, help persons with disabilities enter and keep jobs.
Limits
Most employed persons with disabilities in developing countries, 54%, work in the informal economy, where labour law and accommodation duties rarely reach. Employment remains at 27% against 56% for persons without disabilities.
Promising, but not proven at scale. The stage shows how far each approach has come; it is not a recommendation.
At the Global Disability Summit in Berlin in April 2025, more than 80 governments and organisations adopted a declaration aiming for at least 15% of development projects at country level to be designed to promote disability inclusion. The organisers put the current share at about 6%. Whether donors will meet the target, and how it will be tracked, is not yet clear.
Early warnings in accessible formats, such as text, sign language and vibrating alerts, and evacuation plans that include persons with disabilities are spreading. They address a large gap: 84% of persons with disabilities surveyed had no disaster preparedness plan, and 39% said they would have great difficulty evacuating or could not do so.
More censuses and household surveys now include the Washington Group functional difficulty questions, making it possible to compare outcomes for people with and without disabilities. Coverage is still uneven, and many countries use the questions only occasionally or with different cut-offs.
Smartphone apps that caption speech, describe images or read text aloud, and software that converts documents into accessible formats, are becoming cheaper and more widely available. Their accuracy in many languages, their cost to users, privacy safeguards and their value where smartphone and internet access is limited are still open.
Implementation gap
In 2022, 15% of hospitals and 42% of doctors' offices worldwide were reported inaccessible to wheelchair users, and persons with disabilities were seven times more likely than others to lack health care when needed.
Technology gap
In many countries most people who need assistive products do not have them; access can be as low as 3% in some low-income countries. Products must also be fitted, maintained and repaired, which requires trained staff and supply chains that are often missing.
Knowledge gap
Poverty lines and benefit levels rarely account for spending on care, transport and equipment. Including these costs raised measured income poverty among persons with disabilities by between 27% in Ethiopia and 162% in Spain.
Knowledge gap
Only half of SDG targets have indicators with enough data by disability status to assess progress, so many governments cannot see where persons with disabilities are left behind.
Implementation gap
Around one in ten persons with disabilities say they have been discriminated against because of their disability. Legal protection against disability discrimination covers employment in 79% of countries but education in only 54%.
Coordination gap
According to the Global Disability Summit organisers, only about 6% of development projects directly contribute to disability inclusion, so inclusion is often treated as a separate topic rather than built into health, education, transport and jobs programmes.
Unresolved questions, not vetted breakthroughs. Answering any of them would change what is possible.
Where most people work informally, which combinations of training, cash support, assistive products and employer incentives lead to lasting income for persons with disabilities?
How can the extra costs of disability be measured consistently across countries, and how should benefits and poverty lines take them into account?
How much of the shorter life expectancy of persons with disabilities is due to inaccessible or lower-quality health care rather than the underlying health condition, and which changes in health systems close the gap?
How can countries collect regular, comparable data on persons with disabilities, including people living in institutions and those with intellectual or psychosocial disabilities who are often missed by surveys?
Add captions to videos, alt text to images and clear headings to documents, and check websites and events for accessibility. If you work in design or development, follow recognised accessibility guidelines and test with people who use assistive technology.
Donate to, volunteer with or amplify organisations run by persons with disabilities, which know best which barriers matter most in their communities.
Find out whether your workplace offers reasonable accommodation, accessible recruitment and accessible premises, and raise gaps with management or staff representatives.
If you have a wheelchair, walking aid or hearing aid you no longer need, give it to a programme that checks, refurbishes and fits such products rather than passing it on without support.
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World Health Organization (WHO), published 2023
WHO fact sheet of 7 March 2023 summarising the Global report on health equity for persons with disabilities (December 2022): 1.3 billion people (16%) with a significant disability, premature death up to 20 years earlier, twice the risk of several chronic conditions, transport barriers and intimate partner violence against women with disabilities.
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), published 2024
UN flagship assessment of the SDGs for persons with disabilities: share of targets on track, insufficient or stalled, data coverage, and gaps in health, education, employment, accessibility of buildings, transport and websites, disaster preparedness and discrimination.
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), published 2024
Chapter on poverty and social protection: multidimensional poverty in 33 countries, the extra costs of disability in 40 countries, and disability benefit coverage of persons with severe disabilities in 2016 and 2020 (ILO data).
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), published 2024
Chapter on employment: employment-to-population ratios by disability status in 90 countries, gaps for women and youth, and informal employment of persons with disabilities.
World Health Organization (WHO), published 2024
WHO fact sheet of 2 January 2024 drawing on the WHO/UNICEF Global Report on Assistive Technology (2022): more than 2.5 billion people need assistive products, 3.5 billion projected by 2050, and access from 3% to 90% between countries.
Global Disability Summit 2025 (Germany, Jordan and the International Disability Alliance), published 2025
Summit press release of 3 April 2025 on the Amman-Berlin Declaration, adopted by more than 80 governments and organisations, its target of at least 15% of country-level development projects promoting disability inclusion, the current share of about 6%, and more than 800 commitments.