Better data collection of disability during elections

– building an informed picture of disabled people’s needs and priorities.

My Vote My Vote recommends the inclusion of questions about disability status during all pre-election and exit polling.
Accurate statistics measuring disabled people’s political priorities and their electoral participation is scant, compared to other characteristics and societal cohorts such as age, gender, and ethnicity.
This lack of evidence has left gaps in policymaking, leading to real-life consequences for disabled voters’ exclusion, unmet needs, and little awareness among candidates of how intersectional disability rights are as a policy area.
There is a clear need to gather this information to build better data and from there, inform better policy decisions around accessibility.