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Disabled people are often among the poorest and most marginalised people in communities. Many development organisations state that their intention is to improve the lives of the most disadvantaged and yet don’t actively include disabled people in their work. Given the huge but largely unrecognised potential contribution of 1 billion disabled people towards economic and social progress, it makes good sense for development organisations to actively engage them. Disabled people have a right to participate in and benefit from development, and their inclusion will help reduce the inequalities that are slowing down progress on the elimination of extreme poverty.

This report presents the findings of a desk study that provided an overview of the current state of disability and ageing issues in WASH, from the perspective of the WASH sector. Both disabled and older people were looked at together, because many frail older people, although they may reject the label ‘disabled’, experience impairments that limit their daily activities, which result in them facing similar kinds of barriers to accessing WASH

"This report gives an overview of the information relevant to the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector in the world’s first report on disability. It also highlights how WaterAid is addressing the recommendations in the report, as well as where we could develop our approaches further"

Community – led sanitation often neglects the poorest and most disadvantaged people in society as they are often unable to participate. This paper looked at the experiences of three CLTS communities in Bangladesh. It found that a well being ranking, amongst other things, should be used to help identify vulnerable members in the community and that vulnerable people themselves strongly believe in the power of CLTS to improve their livelihoods and their importance in the participation of CLTS activities. Furthermore, vulnerable people are motivated to move up the sanitation ladder and most households have made improvements to their latrine. Finally, the installation of toilet seats on latrines to aid disabled people has in some cases decreased the sanitation independence of other household members 

This report is a synthesis of three individual country studies on Community-led Total Sanitation (CLTS) activities in WaterAid programmes in Bangladesh, Nepal and Nigeria. The studies examined whether CLTS had led to sustainable and equitable sanitation behaviour change. The study explored whether achieving open-defecation-free (ODF) status is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the entire community to use and maintain hygienic latrines in the long-term. Also, where possible, the study explored the additional factors that enhance the probability that ODF status will translate into entrenched behaviour change, as well as the capacity of communities to move onwards up the ‘sanitation ladder’

Since establishing a programme in Nigeria in 1995, WANG and partners have tried several approaches to promoting sanitation which have not yielded sustainable changes. In its attempt to seek a more sustainable methodology, WANG initiated the pilot testing of the Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach which aimed to facilitate a participatory process of empowering local communities to improve their sanitation situation. This evaluation report assesses the efficiency, effectiveness and relevance of the CLTS programme, and recommends ways of improving and scaling up the programme in Nigeria. The evaluation provides wide ranging evidence that that CLTS is an effective approach to establishing hygiene and sanitation practice in Nigeria, but the effectiveness varied depending on certain conditions which will need to be taken into consideration when scaling up the initiative