Disability Prevalence in the Region

The accuracy of disability statistics in the Arab region is dependent on the way each country disaggregates disabilities and the source and date of the data, and either from a national censuses or surveys by governments or different agencies between 2007 and 2016. In the 2018 report on disability in the Arab region conducted by ^[45] ESCWA, disability prevalence rates in countries across the region less than the world average of 15% and ranges between 0.19% in Qatar and 5.07% in Morocco with varying prevalence between men and women as shown in figure 2. Based on the types of disabilities, the report shows ^[46] that mobility is the highest among all disabilities with a range between 21.6% in Qatar and 43.3% in Egypt, and vision impairment is in second highest with 26.5% in Palestine and Iraq and 12.6% in Qatar.

Figure 2. Disability Prevalence in the Arab region. Source: ESCWA report

https://www.unescwa.org/sites/www.unescwa.org/files/publications/files/disability-arab-region-2018-english_1.pdf P.15 However, all Arab countries show unquestionable commitment to the care of persons with disabilities which is evident in the existence of official governmental institutions responsible for disabilities in all countries and in the signing and ratifying the CRPD since 2006. In addition to the growing number of civil society initiatives, international NGOs, and private sector institutions for the care and awareness of disability, the growth and maturity of the ICT sector in the Arab region has led to the advancement of education, business, and e-government services. According to an ESCWA report” Arab Digital Development Report 2019” ^[47], the average mobile phone subscriptions exceeds 100%, and Internet penetration rate of 51.6% which close to the world average.

The report^[48] identified important findings that have great effects on the ICT future of the region. First, is the noticeable surge in 3G and 4G smart mobile usage and among all age groups. Second, the average number of women connected to the Internet exceeds the world average, especially in the GCC countries, despite the high cost of the Internet in most countries. Finally, e-government services in the region have a very low usage rate while e-commerce is well below world average.

This accelerating dash into ICT enabled services is having a great effect on the status of digital accessibility in most Arab countries and in promoting digital inclusion for all including persons with disabilities , within the framework of digital transformation and digital economy. The ICT development index of 2016 and 2017 ^[49], show high ranks for Gulf States, Bahrain, Qatar, and UAE in particular and low ranks for Syria and Sudan as shown in Table 7. However, the E-government development index (EDGI) index and the e-participation index for the region shows again that the GCC countries are out preforming the rest of the Arab countries and have good world ranking. However, some countries have significant drop off in ranking that might have substantial consequences on e-accessibility adoption.

Table 7. ICT 2017 Development Index

Source: values derived from the IYU report 2017

https://www.itu.int/net4/ITU-D/idi/2017/index.html#idi2017byregion-tab, https://publicadministration.un.org/egovkb/en-us

This rapid growth in ICT, in particular the growing Internet penetration rate in all of the Arab countries, is providing substantial benefits to all sectors including persons with disabilities. This encouraged local governments and civil society organizations to initiate different programs and to use ICT with new technologies to provide IT based services for persons with disabilities. New accessibility features allow persons with disabilities to enjoy reading, listening, and viewing multimedia content available on the Internet in a personalized way that suits their needs.