Mark Priestley

The paper assesses the development of disability equality outcome indicators in 35 European countries in a context of the global governance of human rights and development. Outcome indicators are well-known in other fields, notably in the field of gender equality, but have been much less evident in the disability field. This is, in part, due to difficulties of disability definition and measurement but also reflects the relatively recent formalisation of disability equality as a global human rights concern. Over the past decade there has been a rising expectation on states to structure and quantify their monitoring of disability equality and rights. Despite this there is only patchy evidence that transnational governance frameworks have had any great effect on states’ compliance with this. The first part of the paper reviews the meaning of disability equality and the duty on states to monitor it. The second part assesses the progress made in European countries, including examples of variations in approach and coverage. Acts of equality measurement make injustices more visible and more governable. In this sense public investment in disability equality indicators is still much needed.

This article considers the employment situation of disabled people, and disability policies, in three Nordic and three Baltic countries (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania). The analysis is framed by a changing paradigm for disability policy‐making, from compensation towards human rights and in a context of multi‐level governance involving the EU and UN as significant policy actors. The analysis draws on policy analysis and European social survey data to compare outcomes for disabled people in each country and in binary comparison between Nordic and Baltic countries. This enables interactions between individual and regional block factors to be modelled. We conclude that national policies make a difference, that non‐discrimination policies are not enough and that a focused mix of regulatory and redistributive measures is needed. The findings highlight better employment and social protection outcomes for disabled people in the Nordic countries, but point to policy challenges in both blocks. National processes of (de)commodification and stratification affect disabled people differently and this may disrupt our assumptions about welfare state comparisons.

Access to the Internet has become a sine qua non-of everyday life. It also offers new routes to economic and social inclusion for disabled people. Research on the digital divide shows that social factors affect Internet access but disability status is often overlooked. This paper assesses the extent to which disability makes a difference and how it interacts with other social effects to produce distinctive forms of digital exclusion. The analysis uses survey data from 27 European countries to explore and model, statistically, the interactions between Internet access, disability status, age, gender, education, household financial situation and household composition. Multilevel analysis confirms that socio-demographic factors can explain much variance in outcomes but there is a distinctive disability effect. In particular, the adverse effects of financial constraint, aging and living alone are exacerbated among disabled people. New policies to strengthen e-accessibility, arising from the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and from the European Union, are important but cannot ignore those who are still excluded from the online revolution. Disabled people are over-represented in this group. The evidence suggests that both accessible technologies and appropriate supportive relationships are needed to address this.

This article responds to some of the limitations of traditional human rights monitoring systems by identifying the potential for more dynamic methods of recording and reporting rights-based evidence. The article distinguishes between ‘consecutive’ and ‘concurrent’ models of monitoring and between hierarchical and non-hierarchical monitoring systems. Using the example of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, a principled framework for systems development in this field is outlined. The practical contingencies of designing and implementing new monitoring tools across 34 European countries are then reviewed. The article concludes that more flexible and dynamic reporting tools can help to make states more accountable for the implementation of their human rights obligations and facilitate policy exchange and the sharing of good practice. Recent developments within the European Union disability field offer potential for adaptation to other human rights fields and to other regions of the world.

This paper addresses the challenges of building capacity for collaborative participatory research with disabled people’s organisations in European countries. The paper presents initial findings from the project ‘European Research Agendas for Disability Equality’ (EuRADE), which seeks to build the capacity of civil society organisations to participate in future research collaborations in partnership with academic institutions. The findings draw on survey data identifying the research capacity, needs and priorities of 68 organisations in 25 countries and focuses, in particular, on responses from national or European level representative organisations of disabled people. The findings demonstrate a high degree of motivation and readiness for collaboration in academic research but raise concerns about the readiness of academic institutions to engage disabled people as equal partners within social model and rights‐based approaches. Respondent organisations identified a wide range of research needs that raise challenges for collaborative responses from the academic community. In this way, the findings provide a basis for developing user‐led agendas for European funded research within the emancipatory paradigm, and indentify important opportunities for new international research collaborations between activists and academics.