Disability facts

Disabled people are your employees, customers, stakeholders, shareholders, partners and competitors.

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 - up to £80bn a year in the UK alone.

People with disabilities are protected at work and as customers under The Equality Act 2010.

Disability: why bother?

1 in 3 people are disabled or close to someone who is.[1]

There are 10.8 million disabled people in Britain, which represents around 20% of the population.[2]

1 in 8 UK employees has a disability.[3]

An ageing population

78% of disabled people acquire their disability aged 16 or over.[4]

33% of people aged 50-64 in Britain have a disability.[5]

80% of UK wealth is in the hands of people aged over 45.[6]

In 2020, it is predicted that nearly 60% of people in their 50s will have a disability.[7]

How people define themselves

Only 44% of people who had rights under the Disability Discrimination Act considered themselves to have a disability.[8]

The Equality Act (2010) covers people perceived to have a disability and people associated with a disabled person.

A Breast Cancer Care survey found that 61% of people with breast cancer were not aware that they had rights under the DDA.[9]

Disabled graduates

Over 120,000 disabled students study at UK universities each year.[10]

1 in every 11 students who graduate every year has a disability - around 18,095 students.[11]

10% of disabled students graduate with a first class honours degree, compared to 12% of non-disabled graduates.[12]

Disabled students

The average age of a non-disabled first year degree student is 20.[13]

The average age of a first year student with a hearing impairment is 23.[14]

The average age of a first year student who is a wheelchair user is 26.[15]

The disability pay gap

The pay gap between disabled people and non-disabled people is larger than the gender pay gap.

The pay gap is 22% between disabled and non-disabled men.[16]

The pay gap is 11% between disabled and non-disabled women.[17]

Disabled high flyers

A RADAR report in 2010 surveyed 911 disabled and 550 non-disabled "high-flyers". Of these, 110 respondents with a disability earned over £80,000 per year.[18]

Over half of those surveyed had had their impairment for over 20 years.[19]

61% of people say they would be comfortable with someone with a physical disability being their boss.[20]

49% of people say they would be comfortable with someone with a sensory impairment being their boss.[21]

Business case: customers

The spending power of disabled consumers in the UK is between £50-80 billion.[22]

The spending power of disabled consumers in the USA is over $220 billion.[23]

Two in four disabled people in the UK have experienced difficulties accessing good and services in the past 12 months.[24]

83% of disabled customers have taken their business to a more disability confident competitor.[25]

One in ten disabled people have had difficulty buying a product or service they wanted.[26]

In 2009, disabled people spent £2 billion on domestic holidays in the UK.[27]

Disability and technology

75% of companies on the FTSE 100 on the London Stock Exchange do not meet basic levels of web accessibility.[28]

The UN estimates that this costs them $147 million in lost revenue.[29]

Making online recruitment systems accessible opens a company up to an extra 1.3 million potential applicants.[30]

62% of all employees would benefit from software access features.[31]

A changing global business environment

There are at least 650 million people with disabilities worldwide.[32]

386 million working age people worldwide have a disability.[33]

45 countries have disability discrimination legislation.[34]

102 countries have ratified the UN Convention on Rights of Disabled People.[35]

Internet usage and access needs

There are more blind/low-vision internet users in the US than there are internet users in total in Canada or Italy.[36]

80% of young disabled people regularly use the internet to find out about goods and services.[37]

Disability is the main cause of digital exclusion.[38]

The UN has declared that access to the internet a basic human right.[39]

Employers' Forum on Disability

July 2011

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[1] UK Census 2001

[2] Family Resources Survey, 2008

[3] Labour Force Survey, May 2009

[4] Tanya Burchardt, ‘Social exclusion and the onset of disability', Joseph Rowntree, 2007.

[5] Labour Market Trends report, April 2005

[6] "Age Profiling: Monitoring the make-up of your workforce", DWP, 2006

[7] ‘Disability 2020', IPPR, 2007

[8] ‘Experiences and Expectations of Disabled People', ODI, July 2008

[9] ‘EMPLOY Charter', Breast Cancer Care, May 2008

[10] ‘Higher Educational Analysis: Report 09 06', DIUS Research Report, 2009

[11] ‘What Happens Next?', AGCAS Disabilities Task Group, Jan 2011

[12] ‘Higher Educational Analysis: Report 09 06', DIUS Research Report, 2009

[13] ‘Higher Educational Analysis: Report 09 06', DIUS Research Report, 2009

[14] ‘Higher Educational Analysis: Report 09 06', DIUS Research Report, 2009

[15] ‘Higher Educational Analysis: Report 09 06', DIUS Research Report, 2009

[16] ‘How Fair is Britain?', EHRC, October 2010

[17] ‘How Fair is Britain?', EHRC, October 2010

[18] ‘Doing Seniority Differently', RADAR, March 2010

[19] ‘Doing Seniority Differently', RADAR, March 2010

[20] ‘Public Perceptions of Disabled People' ODI, 2010

[21] ‘Public Perceptions of Disabled People' ODI, 2010

[22] DWP, 2004

[23] ‘The Global Economics of Disability'. IPS Insights, April 2010

[24] ‘Rights and Reality', Leonard Cheshire, 2010

[25] EFD/RADAR ‘Walk Away Pound' survey, 2005

[26] ‘Experiences and Expectations of Disabled People', ODI, July 2008

[27] ‘At Your Service', Visit England, 2011

[28] United Nations (http://www.un.org/disabilities/default.asp?id=18)

[29] United Nations (http://www.un.org/disabilities/default.asp?id=18)

[30] ‘Making E-recruitment barrier-free for people with disabilities'. McKinsey & Co, 2003

[31] Microsoft/Forrester Research, 2003

[32] United Nations (http://www.un.org/disabilities/convention/facts.shtml)

[33] United Nations (http://www.un.org/disabilities/default.asp?id=18)

[34] United Nations (http://www.un.org/disabilities/convention/facts.shtml)

[35] http://www.un.org/disabilities/

[36] Google statistics

[37] ‘Experiences and Expectations of Disabled People', ODI, July 2008

[38] ‘The Internet In Britain: 2009', Oxford Internet Surveys, 2009

[39] http://documents.latimes.com/un-report-internet-rights/