Counting People with Disabilities

As most visitors to this blog are aware, the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act on July 26, 1990 represented a major milestone. The law guaranteed equal opportunity for people with disabilities in public accommodations, commercial facilities, employment, transportation, state and local government services and telecommunications. A common question, however, that still pops up during discussions of disability policy is, “How many people with disabilities are there in the United States?

Coinciding with the 22^nd anniversary of the ADA, the Census Bureau released a new report – Americans With Disabilities: 2010 – that presented a new look at the prevalence of a wide range of specific disabilities, the degree of severity and the well-being of the population with disabilities. The report showed the number of people with disabilities increasing over the previous five years to 56.7 million people in 2010 (54.4 million in 2005), while the proportion of the population with a disability remaining unchanged at 18.7 percent of the civilian noninstitutionalized population.

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