Refugees With Disabilities Cannot Access the Digital Services That Humanitarian Organizations Built to Reach Them

Humanitarian organizations have increasingly digitized their services — registration, status updates, appointment scheduling, information dissemination, complaint mechanisms — and delivered them through websites, mobile apps, and messaging platforms. This digital shift was accelerated by COVID-19 and is now standard practice. But refugees with disabilities, particularly those with visual impairments, cognitive disabilities, or limited motor function, cannot access these digital channels. The UNHCR Innovation Service identifies this as a 2024 priority challenge: "Refugees with disabilities, particularly those with visual impairments, struggle to access critical information via online channels extensively used by humanitarian and governmental actors, undermining their ability to access social and protection services." The digital accessibility problem in refugee contexts is more severe than in general populations because displaced people have fewer alternative channels — if the digital service is inaccessible and there is no in-person alternative, the person is simply excluded.

An estimated 15% of the world's population lives with some form of disability, and displacement contexts create additional disabilities through conflict injuries, inadequate healthcare, and untreated conditions. Refugees with disabilities are among the most marginalized within already-marginalized populations — they face compounding barriers of displacement, disability, and often poverty, gender, or age-related discrimination. When critical services go digital without accessibility, these individuals lose access to protection, healthcare, legal aid, and livelihoods information. This is not a niche problem: at 15% prevalence, there are an estimated 18+ million displaced people with disabilities worldwide. The digital accessibility gap creates a two-tier system where the most vulnerable refugees have the least access to the services designed to help them.

Humanitarian digital platforms were built under extreme time and resource pressure, prioritizing reach and speed over accessibility. Most UNHCR and partner organization websites and apps do not meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA accessibility standards. Screen reader compatibility is poor or untested for the languages used by displaced populations. WhatsApp-based messaging services — which UNHCR has scaled globally as a primary communication channel — are text-dependent and visually oriented, excluding people with visual impairments and those who cannot read. Information sessions held in camps are primarily designed for hearing and sighted attendees. Physical information boards and printed materials assume literacy and visual access. Assistive technology that exists in high-income contexts (screen readers, voice interfaces, adaptive controllers) is designed for widely spoken languages, assumes stable internet connectivity, and costs far more than displaced families can afford. Attempts to add accessibility features to existing platforms after launch have been superficial — retroactive fixes rather than accessible-by-design approaches. The core problem is that refugees with disabilities were not consulted during service design, so their needs were never part of the requirements.

Accessibility-by-design principles embedded from the start of humanitarian digital service development, combined with assistive technology adapted for displacement contexts. Specific needs include: (1) voice-first interfaces in languages spoken by displaced populations (Arabic, Dari, Tigrinya, Somali, Rohingya, Ukrainian, etc.) that don't depend on reading or visual navigation; (2) AI-powered processing of text and audio submissions to UNHCR, as identified in the 2024 innovation portfolio — enabling people to communicate in their own language and modality rather than adapting to the system's requirements; (3) community-based accessibility support where trained refugee volunteers assist people with disabilities in navigating digital services; (4) offline-capable tools that don't require stable connectivity; and (5) participatory design processes that include refugees with disabilities as co-designers, not just end-user testers. The UNHCR Refugee-led Innovation Fund's model of funding displacement-affected communities to design their own solutions is structurally aligned with this approach but has not yet specifically targeted disability accessibility.

A student team could conduct an accessibility audit of a specific humanitarian digital service (UNHCR registration portal, a refugee-serving NGO's mobile app, or a WhatsApp-based information channel) against WCAG 2.1 standards, then design and prototype accessibility improvements for a specific disability type and language community. The deliverable would include the audit findings, a redesigned interface prototype, and usability testing results with displaced people with disabilities. A team with NLP or voice interface skills could prototype a multilingual voice-first interface for a specific humanitarian information service, focusing on a language underserved by existing voice assistants (e.g., Tigrinya, Rohingya). Skills in accessibility design, UX research, NLP, or human-computer interaction would be most relevant.