lukeslp/accessibility-atlas

Accessibility Atlas

Disability demographics, web accessibility compliance, assistive technology usage, employment data, education statistics, and AAC resources -- packaged for research and visualization.

What's Inside

US Disability Demographics (Census Bureau)

File	Records	Source	Description
census_disability_by_county_2022.csv	3,222	Census ACS 5-Year 2022	County-level disability by 6 types (hearing, vision, cognitive, ambulatory, self-care, independent living)
census_disability_states_2021.csv	52	Census ACS 5-Year 2021	State-level disability rates and types
census_disability_characteristics_2022.json	national	Census ACS 1-Year 2022, S1810	Full national breakdown by sex, race, age, and all 6 disability types with age sub-groups
census_disability_by_race_2022.json	9 groups	Census ACS 1-Year 2022, B18101	Disability rates for 9 race/ethnicity categories with age breakdowns
census_disability_by_age_sex_2022.json	national	Census ACS 1-Year 2022, B18101	National disability by 6 age groups and sex
census_disability_national_trends.json	5 years	Census ACS 1-Year 2017-2022	US disability prevalence trend (12.68% to 13.45%)

Global Disability & Health

File	Records	Source	Description
who_healthy_life_expectancy.csv	185	WHO GHO API	Healthy life expectancy (HALE) by country, 2000-2021 wide format
who_hale_long.csv	4,070	WHO GHO API	Same data in long format (185 countries x 22 years)
eurostat_disability_eu.json	36 countries	Eurostat EU-SILC	EU disability prevalence (GALI indicator) and employment gap by country

Disability Employment

File	Records	Source	Description
bls_disability_employment_2024.json	national	Bureau of Labor Statistics	Employment, labor force participation, unemployment rates by disability status, age, race, sex, education, occupation

Special Education

File	Records	Source	Description
idea_special_education_2023.json	51 states	US Dept. of Education, IDEA	7.5M students served under IDEA Part B -- 13 disability categories, state-level data, educational environments

Web Accessibility

File	Records	Source	Description
webaim_million_2025.json	1M pages	WebAIM Million 2025	WCAG failure rates across top 1M websites -- error types, CMS/framework performance, yearly trends
webaim_screen_reader_survey_2024.json	1,539	WebAIM Survey #10	Screen reader preferences, browser combos, problematic elements, mobile usage
ada_digital_lawsuits.json	8 years	Multiple trackers	ADA digital accessibility lawsuits (2017-2024), court breakdown, industry targets
section_508_compliance_2024.json	245	GSA FY24 Assessment	Federal Section 508 compliance across 245 reporting entities

AAC & Assistive Technology

File	Records	Source	Description
aac_vocabulary_data.json	34 libraries	GlobalSymbols, ARASAAC, research	AAC core vocabulary word lists and symbol library catalog -- ARASAAC (13,709), Blissymbolics (6,183), Sclera (11,000), 34 total libraries
wlasl_index.csv	2,000	WLASL Dataset	Word-Level American Sign Language video index -- 2,000 signs with gloss labels
vizwiz_val_annotations.csv	4,319	VizWiz VQA	Visual questions from blind users with crowdsourced answers and answerability labels

Reference

File	Description
accessibility_dataset_catalog.json	Curated catalog of 15 accessibility datasets across 6 categories

Quick Start

import pandas as pd
import json

# County-level disability rates
counties = pd.read_csv("census_disability_by_county_2022.csv")
print(counties.nlargest(10, "disability_rate")[["county_name", "disability_rate"]])

# National disability characteristics
with open("census_disability_characteristics_2022.json") as f:
    chars = json.load(f)
# Disability rates by race
for race, data in chars["by_race_ethnicity"].items():
    print(f"{race}: {data['rate_pct']}%")

# Disability employment gap
with open("bls_disability_employment_2024.json") as f:
    bls = json.load(f)
stats = bls["overall_statistics"]
print(f"Employment rate - Disabled: {stats['with_disability']['employment_population_ratio']}%")
print(f"Employment rate - Non-disabled: {stats['without_disability']['employment_population_ratio']}%")

# IDEA special education
with open("idea_special_education_2023.json") as f:
    idea = json.load(f)
print(f"Students served: {idea['national_summary']['total_students_served']:,}")
for cat in idea["disability_categories"][:5]:
    print(f"  {cat['category']}: {cat['count']:,} ({cat['percentage']}%)")

# EU disability comparison
with open("eurostat_disability_eu.json") as f:
    eu = json.load(f)
print(f"EU27 disability rate: {eu['eu27_summary_2023']['total_disability_rate_pct']}%")

# WebAIM Million trends
with open("webaim_million_2025.json") as f:
    webaim = json.load(f)
trends = webaim["yearly_trends"]
for year, pct in zip(trends["years"], trends["pages_with_failures_pct"]):
    print(f"{year}: {pct}% of pages have WCAG failures")

# AAC symbol libraries
with open("aac_vocabulary_data.json") as f:
    aac = json.load(f)
for lib in aac["symbol_libraries"]["libraries"]:
    print(f"{lib['name']}: {lib['total_symbols']} symbols ({lib['license']})")

# WHO healthy life expectancy
hale = pd.read_csv("who_hale_long.csv")
print(hale.groupby("year")["hale_years"].mean().round(1))

Data Highlights

US Disability Demographics (Census 2022)

• 44.1 million Americans (13.4%) have a disability
• Ambulatory (6.7%) and cognitive (5.7%) are the most common types
• Rates vary by race: AIAN highest (15.7%), Asian lowest (8.3%)
• Disability rises sharply with age: 0.8% under 5, 45.9% age 75+
• US disability rate increased from 12.68% (2017) to 13.45% (2022)

Disability Employment (BLS 2024)

• 24.5% labor force participation for disabled workers vs ~67% without
• 7.5% unemployment rate for disabled vs 3.8% without
• Significant gaps by education, age, race, and disability type

Special Education (IDEA 2022-23)

• 7.5 million students served under IDEA Part B
• Specific learning disability is the largest category (32%)
• Autism now represents 13% of IDEA students (rising trend)

EU Disability (Eurostat 2023)

• 26.9% of EU27 adults report activity limitations
• 21.4 percentage point employment gap between disabled and non-disabled
• Rates range from ~15% (Bulgaria) to ~35% (Finland, Portugal)

Web Accessibility (WebAIM 2025)

• 94.8% of the top 1M websites have WCAG failures
• Average of 51 errors per page
• Low contrast text remains the #1 issue (79% of pages)

Screen Reader Usage (WebAIM 2024)

• JAWS (40.5%) and NVDA (37.7%) dominate desktop
• iOS VoiceOver leads mobile (70.6%)
• CAPTCHA is the #1 most problematic element

AAC Symbol Libraries

• 34 open symbol libraries cataloged via GlobalSymbols
• ARASAAC leads with 13,709 pictograms (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
• Blissymbolics: 6,183 semantic symbols (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Global Health (WHO)

• Healthy life expectancy data for 185 countries across 22 years
• Tracks years of healthy life lost to disability worldwide

Sources

Source	License	URL
US Census Bureau ACS	Public Domain	https://data.census.gov
WHO Global Health Observatory	CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO	https://www.who.int/data/gho
Bureau of Labor Statistics	Public Domain	https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsdisability.htm
US Dept. of Education (IDEA)	Public Domain	https://sites.ed.gov/idea/data/
Eurostat EU-SILC	Eurostat copyright policy	https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat
WebAIM Million	Fair use (structured summary)	https://webaim.org/projects/million/
WebAIM Screen Reader Survey	Fair use (structured summary)	https://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey10/
GlobalSymbols	Various CC licenses	https://globalsymbols.com
ARASAAC	CC BY-NC-SA 4.0	https://arasaac.org
VizWiz	Research use	https://vizwiz.org
WLASL	Research use	https://dxli94.github.io/WLASL/
UsableNet / Accessibility.works	Fair use (summary stats)	https://info.usablenet.com/ada-website-compliance-lawsuit-tracker
GSA Section 508	Public Domain	https://www.section508.gov

Record Format Examples

Census County Disability

fips,county_name,state_fips,county_fips,total_population,disability_total,disability_rate,...
01001,"Autauga County, Alabama",01,001,57443,4759,8.29,...

WHO HALE (Long Format)

country_code,region,year,hale_years
AFG,Eastern Mediterranean,2000,41.0
USA,Americas,2021,65.2

BLS Disability Employment

{
  "overall_statistics": {
    "with_disability": {
      "labor_force_participation_rate": 24.5,
      "unemployment_rate": 7.5,
      "employment_population_ratio": 22.7
    }
  }
}

Project Home

Part of the Data Trove collection at dr.eamer.dev.

Author

Luke Steuber

• Web: lukesteuber.com
• Bluesky: @lukesteuber.com

License

MIT License -- see LICENSE for details.

Note: Individual source datasets have their own licenses (see Sources table). Census, BLS, GSA, and IDEA data are public domain. WHO data is CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO. WebAIM data is structured from published reports under fair use. ARASAAC symbols are CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. VizWiz and WLASL are for research use.