In the past four decades, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has fundamentally changed the way disability is understood. Traditional conceptions focused on individual deficiency have been replaced by a social and rights-based approach that holds the State and society responsible for eliminating the structural barriers —physical, social and cultural— that limit the participation of persons with disabilities in community life.
A central aspect of this process is the availability of robust and comparable statistical information, which increases the visibility of persons with disability. Generating data to that end is not only a technical challenge but also a political imperative, as statistical visibility is indispensable to the promotion of the fundamental rights of this population group.
Latin America and the Caribbean has made progress in the inclusion of disability in the public agenda, but marked inequalities persist between persons with disabilities and persons without disabilities. It is therefore critical to approach disability from the perspective of rights and inclusion to ensure that persons with disabilities have their voices heard and can fully exercise their rights, in pursuit of more just and inclusive societies.