Side Event at the International Day for People with Disability

IDPP will be hosting a side event at the 20th International Day for People with Disability in New York at UN Headquarters on December 1 from 1:15pm-2:30pm. IDPP partnered with the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Division on Social Policy and Development, and the Secretariat for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to host the event.

The theme of the side event is Big Data Analytics and Text Mining: Monitoring and Evaluating Disability and Development for SDGs and CRPD Implementation. Computational text mining extracts key trends among the voices of decision-makers and experts working on disability as well as persons with disabilities worldwide.

Our speakers will present their findings from various studies and debate the impact and implications of big data analytics on national, regional, and global levels. Speakers include Dr. Derrick Cogburn from IDPP, Dr. Maria Martinho from UN DESA, Mr. Jason DaSilva from AXS Map, Ms. Chiara Barbagianni from the University of Genoa and Mr. Holger Dieterich from Accessibility Cloud.  

IDPP collaborated with UN DESA to analyze the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities State Party Reports and Shadow Reports to identify global priorities and progress in implementing the CRPD. And text mining isn’t just for official state reports. It can encompass social media platforms too. Platforms like Twitter provide a space for sharing information and discussion. Ms. Chiara Barbagianni will share her research on identifying the main topics among Twitter messages exchanged in regard to Mental Health Day.

Big data can also come from crowdsourcing information. With online and smartphone applications, huge databases of information can be built. For example, the app, Accessibility Cloud, has compiled and classified over one million locations worldwide based on their accessibility level via information crowdsourced by accessibility smartphone applications.

The event will conclude with speakers sharing their recommendations for using these innovative forms of data analysis to create more focused and evidence-based implementation mechanisms for the CRPD as well as an open Q&A with the audience.

If you’d like to watch the side event recording you can use the following link: https://us.bbcollab.com/recording/d654a23632b242ea90740aa33a83af0f.