Disability facts

The term disability covers a wide range of different people with different impairments, which may or may not affect the way they do their job. People with disabilities work in all sectors of the economy and in all types of roles. Disabled people also have enormous spending power as customers - around £80bn a year in the UK alone.

People with disabilities are protected at work and as customers under the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995.

Under the law the term 'disability' is so wide that people who you might not think of as disabled and may not even think of themselves as disabled are protected by the law.

Here are some other key facts about disability:

• There are at least 650 million disabled people worldwide.
• 2% of the working age UK population becomes disabled every year - 78% of disabled people acquire their impairment aged 16 or older.
• One in five disabled people in the UK are unemployed but want to work; this compares to one in 15 of non-disabled people.
• In 2002 roughly 51.2 million or 18% of Americans stated they had some form of disability.
• Almost four million Australians or 20% of the population reported a disability in 2003.
• One in six people of the working age population (aged 16 to 64) in Europe has either a long-standing health problem or a disability.
• At 30%, the poverty rate for disabled adults in the UK is twice that for non-disabled adults.
• A graduate with a work-limiting disability in the UK is more likely to want work than an unqualified person with no disability.
• 6% of first class honour degrees are gained by students known to have a disability.