Scientific and technological reports

Demographics

In geographical Europe (with a population of 800 million), there are about 100 million people over retirement age and 50 million people with disabilities. There are also the 0.5% of the population who are temporarily disabled through illness or accidents. Many people have more than one disability.

The prevalence of most forms of impairment increases considerably with age, and therefore the population of people with disabilities grows disproportionately as life expectancy rises.

Fig 1 Estimated population (in millions) of people aged 65 and over in Europe.

In geographic Europe the estimated number of people with impairments, such that they have problems with standard tele-communication equipment or services, is:

Dexterity Impaired

Reduced function of arms and hands makes activities related to moving, turning or pressing objects difficult or impossible. This does not influence speech communication itself but makes it hard to make a phone call or use a wide range of other telecommunication equipment.

Cannot use fingers 1 Million
Cannot use one arm 1 Million
Reduced strength 22 Million
Reduced co-ordination 11 Million

Mobility Impaired

Reduced function of legs and feet means depending on a wheelchair or artificial aid to walking. In addition to people who are born with a disability, this group includes a very large number whose condition is caused by age or accidents.

Wheelchair user 3 Million
Cannot walk without aid 45 Million

Speech, Language and Cognitively Impaired

Speech impairment may influence speech in a general way, or only certain aspects of it, such as fluency or voice volume. Language impairment may be associated with a more general intellectual impairment.

Speech impaired 2 Million
Language impaired 5 Million
Dyslexia 25 Million
Intellectually impaired 30 Million

Hearing Impaired

The term deaf implies a total or near total loss of hearing and such people do not benefit significantly from the use of amplification. Hard of hearing people have lesser degrees of hearing loss and generally benefit from amplification. People born deaf may communicate using sign language rather than speech.

Deaf 1 Million
Hard of hearing 80 Million

Visually Impaired

Blindness implies a total or near total loss of the ability to perceive form. Low vision implies an ability to utilise some aspects of visual perception, but with a greater dependency on information received from other sources in addition.

Blind 1 Million
Low vision 11 Million

September 1995