People with Disabilities

People with disabilities, their family members and the people to whom they relate form a large group within the population and are thus also an important political and economic factor.

There are currently around 760,300 people with a "registered disability" living in Austria. This figure includes those parts of the Austrian resident population that appear in registers of the federal registration on persons with disabilities or impairments. These include recipients of the federal long-term care allowance (“Pflegegeld”), holders of an Austrian disability pass, persons with the status of "registered persons with disabilities according to the Disability Employment Act" (“begünstigt behindert”) and persons with a degree of disability below 50 %.

People who have been confronted with temporary problems related to their mobility or other impairments (e.g. people who have had accidents or are undergoing medical treatment) also have experience of disability.

For all these groups of persons it is important that disability policy creates conditions from which as many people as possible will benefit. A key aspect is that the environment should be designed to be as accessible as possible in every sense.