2 research outputs found
Making visible the invisible: Why disability-disaggregated data is vital to "leave no-one behind"
People with disability make up approximately 15% of the worldâs population and are,
therefore, a major focus of the âleave no-one behindâ agenda. It is well known that people with
disabilities face exclusion, particularly in low-income contexts, where 80% of people with disability
live. Understanding the detail and causes of exclusion is crucial to achieving inclusion, but this cannot
be done without good quality, comprehensive data. Against the background of the Convention for
the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2006, and the advent of 2015âs 2030 Agenda for Sustainable
Development there has never been a better time for the drive towards equality of inclusion for people
with disability. Governments have laid out targets across seventeen Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs), with explicit references to people with disability. Good quality comprehensive disability data,
however, is essential to measuring progress towards these targets and goals, and ultimately their
success. It is commonly assumed that there is a lack of disability data, and development actors tend
to attribute lack of data as the reason for failing to proactively plan for the inclusion of people with
disabilities within their programming. However, it is an incorrect assumption that there is a lack of
disability data. There is now a growing amount of disability data available. Disability, however, is a
notoriously complex phenomenon, with definitions of disability varying across contexts, as well as
variations in methodologies that are employed to measure it. Therefore, the body of disability data
that does exist is not comprehensive, is often of low quality, and is lacking in comparability. The need
for comprehensive, high quality disability data is an urgent priority bringing together a number of
disability actors, with a concerted response underway. We argue here that enough data does exist and
can be easily disaggregated as demonstrated by Leonard Cheshireâs Disability Data Portal and other
studies using the Washington Group Question Sets developed by the Washington Group on Disability
Statistics. Disaggregated data can improve planning and budgeting for reasonable accommodation to
realise the human rights of people with disabilities. We know from existing evidence that disability
data has the potential to drive improvements, allowing the monitoring and evaluation so essential to
the success of the 2030 agenda of âleaving no-one behindâ
Aggregation Bias: A Proposal to Raise Awareness Regarding Inclusion in Visual Analytics
Data is a powerful tool to make informed decisions. They can be
used to design products, to segment the market, and to design policies. However,
trusting so much in data can have its drawbacks. Sometimes a set of
indicators can conceal the reality behind them, leading to biased decisions that
could be very harmful to underrepresented individuals, for example. It is challenging
to ensure unbiased decision-making processes because people have their
own beliefs and characteristics and be unaware of them. However, visual tools
can assist decision-making processes and raise awareness regarding potential
data issues. This work describes a proposal to fight biases related to aggregated
data by detecting issues during visual analysis and highlighting them, trying to
avoid drawing inaccurate conclusions