BackgroundThe World Health Organization (WHO) was tasked with developing health system guidelines for the implementation of rehabilitation services. Stakeholders’ perceptions are an essential factor to take into account in the guideline development process.The aim of this study was to assess stakeholders’ perceived feasibility and acceptability of eighteen rehabilitation services and the values they attach to ten rehabilitation outcomes.MethodsWe disseminated an online self-administered questionnaire through a number of international and regional organizations from the different WHO regions. Eligible individuals included persons with disability, caregivers of persons with disability, health professionals, administrators and policy makers. The answer options consisted of a 9-point Likert scale.ResultsTwo hundred fifty three stakeholders participated. The majority of participants were health professional (64 %). In terms of outcomes, ‘Increasing access’ and ‘Optimizing utilization’ were the top service outcomes rated as critical (i.e., 7, 8 or 9 on the Likert scale) by >70 % of respondents. ‘Fewer hospital admissions’, ‘Decreased burden of care’ and ‘Increasing longevity’ were the services rated as least critical (57 %, 63 % and 58 % respectively).In terms of services, ‘Community based rehabilitation’ and ‘Home based rehabilitation’ were found to be both definitely feasible and acceptable (75 % and 74 % respectively). ‘Integrated and decentralized rehabilitation services’ was found to be less feasible than acceptable according to stakeholders (61 % and 71 % respectively). As for ‘Task shifting’, most stakeholders did not appear to find task shifting as either definitely feasible or definitely acceptable (63 % and 64 % respectively).ConclusionThe majority of stakeholder’s perceived ‘Increasing access’ and ‘Optimizing utilization’ as most critical amongst rehabilitation outcomes. The feasibility of the ‘Integrated and decentralized rehabilitation services’ was perceived to be less than their acceptability. The majority of stakeholders found ‘Task shifting’ as neither feasible nor acceptable.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12955-016-0406-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

People with disability make up approximately 15% of the world’s population and are, therefore, a major focus of the ‘leave no-one behind’ agenda. It is well known that people with disabilities face exclusion, particularly in low-income contexts, where 80% of people with disability live. Understanding the detail and causes of exclusion is crucial to achieving inclusion, but this cannot be done without good quality, comprehensive data. Against the background of the Convention for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2006, and the advent of 2015’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development there has never been a better time for the drive towards equality of inclusion for people with disability. Governments have laid out targets across seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with explicit references to people with disability. Good quality comprehensive disability data, however, is essential to measuring progress towards these targets and goals, and ultimately their success. It is commonly assumed that there is a lack of disability data, and development actors tend to attribute lack of data as the reason for failing to proactively plan for the inclusion of people with disabilities within their programming. However, it is an incorrect assumption that there is a lack of disability data. There is now a growing amount of disability data available. Disability, however, is a notoriously complex phenomenon, with definitions of disability varying across contexts, as well as variations in methodologies that are employed to measure it. Therefore, the body of disability data that does exist is not comprehensive, is often of low quality, and is lacking in comparability. The need for comprehensive, high quality disability data is an urgent priority bringing together a number of disability actors, with a concerted response underway. We argue here that enough data does exist and can be easily disaggregated as demonstrated by Leonard Cheshire’s Disability Data Portal and other studies using the Washington Group Question Sets developed by the Washington Group on Disability Statistics. Disaggregated data can improve planning and budgeting for reasonable accommodation to realise the human rights of people with disabilities. We know from existing evidence that disability data has the potential to drive improvements, allowing the monitoring and evaluation so essential to the success of the 2030 agenda of ‘leaving no-one behind’.

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