Disability: Model disability survey

The Model Disability Survey (MDS) is a survey tool that provides comprehensive information about the levels of disability in a population. It also identifies unmet needs and the barriers and inequalities faced by people who experience different levels of disability.

The MDS was developed by the World Health Organization and the World Bank.

The MDS has been designed to help countries better understand the situation of people with disability, including whether they have mild, moderate or severe disability, and what needs to be done to ensure they can fully enjoy their human rights on an equal basis with others.

The MDS will also support countries to implement and report on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Sustainable Development Goals.

• How is disability conceptualized in the MDS?
• Distribution of disability in the population

The MDS is based on the understanding of disability in the WHO International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). The ICF sees disability as something that a person with a health condition or impairment experiences depending on the barriers he or she faces in daily life. This would include, for example, how they are treated by other people or whether they are able to access buildings, transportation and information. The ICF also helps ensure that disability is seen as something dynamic, based on an individual’s situation, which can change if and when the environment becomes more enabling.

In the ICF, how much disability a person experiences in daily life can be very different: on a continuum it ranges from people who do not experience disability at all to people who have very severe levels of disability. Because the environment plays an important role in a person’s experience of disability, it is not appropriate to assume that certain health conditions or impairments cause more disability than others. For example, it is not appropriate to assume that people with mobility impairments experience higher levels of disability than people with hearing impairments. Nor is it appropriate to assume that two people with the exact same impairment (such as low vision) or health condition (such as Parkinson’s disease) will experience the same barriers and consequently the same level of disability. It all depends on where people live, how they are treated, what supports they have, and what level of health or social services they have access to, for example.