Disability and Development is the buzzword for the development of disability access activities by large multinational institutions such as The World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and international Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) such as World Health Organization (WHO) or Handicap International.

The World Bank began pursuing Disability and Development policies under the tenure of World Bank President James Wolfensohn from 1995 to 2005 as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) recognized that eradicating poverty meant focusing on the issues of disabled people as poverty and disability were found to be strongly correlated, therefore in order to reduce poverty policies were needed to enable access for the disabled population in respect to transportation, housing, employment, education and other human development needs.

This work in the Disability and Development field is still very much in its infancy and focuses on structural development such as making sure disability access is included during the building of large projects such as train stations, schools, government buildings and medical institutions. Even then, much work remains to be done.    

Several of the IDE staff and board members have been involved in Disability and Development efforts through various governments, multinational organizations and NGOs. Some examples of work include World Bank projects in Ukraine, Romania, NGO work in the conflict area of Bosnia, French government assistance in the disaster area of Haiti and others.

Since so many organizations are often providing assistance to people affected in a disaster area, the mindset of decision-makers, often who are not disabled, is to focus on providing emergency assistance to as many people as possible. This is a natural decision in respect to resource allocation since the rationale is that there are limited supplies available for a larger number of people during a crisis situation.

The founders of IDE, Michael Friess and Emmanuel Jacq, saw from their experience in Haiti that if there was an NGO dedicated to ensuring access to emergency assistance for the Deaf, then governments and NGOs would be able to redirect some of those supplies to the Deaf community in the affected crisis area. This became a realization that there was in fact nobody working to ensure access for the Deaf during emergency and crisis situations.

Simply by being present and utilizing existing networks, they realized that they could bring recognition and assistance to the needs of the Deaf who are unable to obtain the needed supplies such as food, clean water, tents and medicines that are available to others through the U.N. or Red Cross during humanitarian crisis. Now Michael and Emmanuel have taken the task of building an organization that will continue this work where disaster assistance is needed with the sole focus of ensuring access to aid for the Deaf.