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This report documents the experience of exclusion of people with intellectual disabilities and their families during the COVID-19 pandemic. These experiences reveal pre-existing structural inequalities that affected the lives of people with intellectual disabilities and their families before COVID-19, during the pandemic, and beyond, and this report raises up the voices of those most excluded in a time of global crisis and demands an inclusive COVID-19 recovery.

This report includes the experiences of people with intellectual disabilities and families across eight different issue areas. Across these themes, we examined how and why people with intellectual disabilities were left out and excluded in pandemic responses, what pre-existing conditions and inequalities contributed to their vulnerability and exclusion, and how future policy structures could begin to address both this immediate and systemic exclusion.

Together, these experiences and policy solutions form our global agenda for inclusive COVID-19 recovery, an action plan to ensure that government efforts to ‘build back better’ are inclusive of people with intellectual disabilities and their families.

This guide is part of a project on the right to vote and how people with intellectual disabilities can have their voice heard by the people who make laws and policies that affect us. 

"The ABLE TO INCLUDE solution improves the quality of life of people with intellectual or developmental disabilities (IDD) and similar conditions such as people affected by dementia or any kind of cognitive impairment. To achieve this, the project integrates a set of already-developed technologies to create a context-aware accessibility layer that, by being integrated with existing and future ICT tools, can improve the day-to-day life of people with IDD by understanding their surroundings and helping them to interact with the information society. The project focuses on the most important areas that a person needs to live independently and find fulfilment as an individual: to socialize in the context of the web 2.0, to travel independently and be able to work.

Three key technologies are used as a framework to develop everyday tasks:

Text and content simplifier
A pictogram-to-text, text-to-pictogram and pictogram-pictogram translation tool
Text-to-speech functionalities

These technologies are utilised to create an accessibility layer for people with IDD in everyday tasks within the framework of the information society. The accessibility layer is accessed through an open and free API that foster the introduction of an assistive technologies layer for people with IDD in any software development."

Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) reflects a fundamental shift in thinking: it asserts that with support all people with intellectual disabilities are able to make decisions and have control in their lives. This Global Report presents the perspective of people with intellectual disabilities and our families on the right to decide. Over two years, over 600 self-advocates, family members, disability advocates, and professionals participated in discussions motivated by Inclusion International's Global Campaign on the Right to Decide. Additionally, more than 80 organizations from more than 40 countries worldwide contributed.

This booklet is intended to raise awareness about key issues affecting the lives of people with intellectual disabilities and their families. It outlines how the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities can be used to address those issues.