Daryl Lloyd,2 Diana Dalton3 and Anne MacKinnon4
From being one of the first countries to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) (UN 2006) to helping found the Global Action on Disability (GLAD) network, the UK has demonstrated a longstanding and meaningful commitment to disability inclusion. The instigation of the first Global Disability Summit in London in 2018 was a pivotal moment for the global disability movement. As co-hosts with the Government of Kenya and the International Disability Alliance, the UK marked a critical step change in official development assistance (ODA) programmes supporting people with disabilities.
The Disability Inclusive Development (DID) programme was one of several launched by the UK’s Secretary of State for International Development at that time, Penny Mordaunt, in her opening speech at the summit (Mordaunt 2018).
DID was created to address the lack of robust research and evidence on inclusive development. The programme tested ‘what works’ to improve outcomes for people with disabilities in health, education, and livelihoods through innovative approaches, alongside aiming to reduce negative stereotyping and discrimination. Successful interventions were then scaled up to achieve broader, transformative change.
Above all, the research, evidence, and learning products were intended as global public goods for all to use, helping the UK and others design and implement development programmes that explicitly and deliberately benefit and include people with disabilities.
DID followed the principles of the CRPD and the motto ‘nothing about us without us’ by working closely with Organisations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs). These organisations contributed expert knowledge about their communities. This approach is strongly supported by participatory development literature (such as Chambers 1994 and Cornwall 2008) which emphasises the importance of engaging those most affected in the design and delivery of interventions.
Kemi Williams from FCDO with programme partners and disability activists at the launch of the programme stigma report in New York.
Photo credit Anya Nelson/Sightsavers
DID interventions started by targeting relatively small populations of people with disabilities, seeking to take evidenced approaches to a consequential scale. This has not always been easy.
By March 2025, DID projects had provided almost 30,000 people with disabilities with better access to health care, education, and livelihoods. And more widely, the projects have reached over 15.6 million people through policy reforms, media campaigns, and community engagement activities aimed at reducing stigma and improving access to services. These numbers are impressive – and represent meaningful change for all of those people – but the true value of DID lies in the 149 research, learning, and evidence products it has produced as global public goods, and in how this body of knowledge has influenced sustainable change.
In some cases, this change has led to more inclusive service provision; in others, it has helped shift attitudes in communities and organisations. For example, in Kenya, local authorities in Homa Bay and Kakuma have committed over 300m Kenyan shillings (around US$2.4m) to build 250 new early childhood development centres, modelled on those established by DID. In Nigeria, collaboration between DID, FCDO’s Lafiya programme, and the Kaduna state government has led to plans for a £15.8m project to advance sexual and reproductive rights for people with disabilities.
Inclusion goes beyond simply offering accessible services. Discrimination, social behaviour, and attitudes often determine whether people actually choose to use these services. Tackling stigma and discrimination has been a common thread in all DID projects. Working with OPDs has been central to success in these areas. For instance, in northern Tanzania, OPDs, village disability committees, and local authorities have encouraged parents and carers to bring children with disabilities for assessments and enrol them in schools for the first time. This has been so successful that children from outside the project area have travelled in for assessments and schooling.
Collaboration has also been key to evaluating projects and producing rigorous evidence. DID comprises two main components: an intervention arm, the Disability Inclusive Development Inclusive Futures (hereafter Inclusive Futures) programme, and an evaluation arm, the Programme for Evidence to Inform Disability Action (PENDA). The Inclusive Futures programme also collaborated with the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and the Sightsavers Research Centre. IDS embedded qualitative, participatory research across project and programme work and produced 31 research papers, situational analyses, and other research outputs. This research explored the experiences of people with disabilities on topics including the Covid-19 pandemic, education, and employment.
The Sightsavers Research Centre conducted a randomised controlled trial on the DID education project in Kenya. The DID evaluation arm, PENDA, conducted randomised controlled trials on six Inclusive Futures interventions, generating robust evidence and demonstrating the economic value of inclusion (Banks and Polack 2014). This unified approach allowed the two consortia to align their workstreams. Insights from PENDA’s impact evaluations and analyses have informed influential publications including the 2025 Global Disability Inclusion Report (Global Disability Summit 2025) and have shaped policy discussions and programme design in Kenya, Laos, Nigeria, and Malawi.
‘What works’ programmes inherently carry risks of failure. These should be mitigated through adaptive, responsive approaches – learning to fail quickly and pivot to more successful interventions (Khan 2022).
DID interventions have not always been straightforward, especially with the arrival of the pandemic. While the programme adapted well to challenges, it is worth considering whether the absence of failed interventions reflects limited ambition for radical innovation. Future programmes might commit more to finding the limit of what is achievable, even if this means taking greater risks with public money.
The first DID evidence products were completed within the first couple of years. By Year 4, we had created 57 products and were generating around 30 new products a year, but with no clear strategy how to disseminate them.
The first DID evidence products were completed within the first couple of years. By Year 4, we had created 57 products and were generating around 30 new products a year, but with no clear strategy how to disseminate them.
We have now recorded more than 20 dissemination activities each year since the strategy was launched. In every case, the activity involved one or more OPD partners to retain the close link between project implementation and the disability movement.
We have now recorded more than 20 dissemination activities each year since the strategy was launched. In every case, the activity involved one or more OPD partners to retain the close link between project implementation and the disability movement.
Uptake of evidence within FCDO has faced challenges, despite targeted dissemination efforts. As the funding landscape (OECD 2025) and priorities (Harper et al. 2025) change, making the case for ODA programmes to be inclusive has become increasingly difficult. There continues to be willingness to consider how to reach and meet the needs of people with disabilities. However, costs of reasonable accommodations and a move to focusing on systems change make it harder for programme teams to capitalise on the entry points that already exist.
This does not mean that there have not been strong instances of mainstreaming using the evidence from DID – both the Lafiya programme in Nigeria and the Women’s Integrated Sexual Health (WISH) programme operating across Africa and Asia are good examples – but it does mean that there has not yet been systemwide implementation across the organisation. While dissemination has been robust, translating evidence into implementation requires a shift in culture and practice which often requires longer than the lifespan of a single programme. The question of how to influence decision makers and allowing enough time for successful influencing needs to be a consideration for all future evidence-producing programmes.
To support both our wider work on mainstreaming and the uptake of evidence on disability inclusion, FCDO has created a network of disability champions within FCDO, spanning policy, research and delivery departments, and overseas offices. These champions, primarily from professional and advisory cadres such as social development, health, education, climate, and governance, are well placed to apply new evidence in their specific contexts and programmes. The network includes regional equalities advisers who have been valuable conduits for getting evidence from central programmes and helpdesks out to local programme and policy teams. Together with regional and country-level capability-building sessions, this reflects the importance of mainstreaming disability inclusion across sectors, as highlighted by other practitioners (Shakespeare 2018).
The creation of the six principles for inclusive development (Inclusive Futures 2023) provides a blueprint for embedding disability inclusion in mainstream programmes. Recognising the barriers listed above and how hard it can be for people without expertise in disability to spot entry points, FCDO developed a tailored version of the six principles, using FCDO ODA programmes as examples. This gave programme teams a familiar context for each of the principles, helping them to understand how they can apply them within their own work.
The DID programme marked a new approach to disabilityinclusive development. As with all UK ODA programmes, participants are at the centre of delivery. But so too was the focus on learning. The legacy of DID will be the evidence it has generated and shared. The real test of success is how this evidence is used by others with the power to empower and include those with disabilities across the globe. This IDS Bulletin provides a further opportunity to reach that objective.
1 This issue of the IDS Bulletin was supported by UK aid under its flagship Disability Inclusive Development (DID) programme. The DID programme was delivered through two separate programmes. The eight-year consortium intervention, Disability Inclusive Development Inclusive Futures (Inclusive Futures) programme, led by Sightsavers and the International Disability Alliance, ran from August 2018 to March 2026. It has reached more than 19 million people and generated almost 300 learning and evidence resources to inform policy and practice on disability-inclusive development. The evaluation programme, the Programme for Evidence to Inform Disability Action (PENDA), was delivered by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. The opinions expressed are the authors’ own and do not reflect the views of the funders.
2 Daryl Lloyd, Senior Responsible Owner for Disability Inclusive Development (DID) programme, Gender, Equalities and Rights Department, Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), UK [corresponding author].
3 Diana Dalton, Deputy British High Commissioner and Development Director to Kenya, British High Commission Nairobi, FCDO, UK.
4 Anne MacKinnon, Senior Responsible Owner for PENDA, Research and Evidence Directorate, FCDO, UK.
5 See the Stories of Organisational Change for BBC Media Action, BRAC, and SDDirect.
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© 2026 The Authors. IDS Bulletin © Institute of Development Studies | DOI: 10.19088/1968-2026.154 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited and any modifications or adaptations are indicated.
The IDS Bulletin is published by Institute of Development Studies, Library Road, Brighton, BN1 9RE, UK. This article is part of IDS Bulletin Vol. 57 No. 1 March 2026 ‘Building Disability-Inclusive Futures’; the Introduction is also recommended reading.