New NEA Research on Arts Participation among People with Disabilities
Nearly 28 million U.S. adults have some type of disability related to hearing, sight, cognition, walking, and other activities of daily living. A Matter of Choice? Arts Participation Patterns of Disabled Americans offers the first nationally representative analysis of arts-participation patterns among people with disabilities. The report gleans its findings from the National Endowment for the Arts 2012 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA), the NEA’s long-running survey on Americans’ arts engagement habits. Starting in 2012, the SPPA began gathering information on disabilities among the non-institutionalized, working age civilian population. Because of the relatively small populations of people with individual types of disability, this research combines data on adults with any reported disability, who comprised 12 percent of the U.S. population in 2012.