Global Assessment

Business Disability Forum’s Global Assessment is designed for multinational, matrixed organisations to measure and improve their performance on disability inclusion – for disabled customers, clients, service users, employees and other stakeholders. It helps you assess how disability-inclusive your organisation is both at headquarters and across key international markets, providing a clear picture of where to focus your global disability-inclusion strategy.

Global Assessment – Supporting information

Browse the pages below for more information about what the Assessment involves, the benefits of completing it, and support for making the business case to secure internal buy-in.

Why complete Business Disability Forum’s Global Assessment?

Multinational organisations can use our Global Assessment to assess its disability inclusion maturity at a global level and at a country level.

What completing the Global Assessment involves

View this page for guidance on how to prepare for the Global Assessment, information about support available, and timelines.

How to make the case for completing the Global Assessment

Use the information and tools on this page to make the case to strategic internal stakeholders for completing the Global Assessment.

How the Global Assessment aligns with laws and other frameworks

Completing the Global Assessment can help your organisation meet its legal and regulatory requirements and complete other disability inclusion tools.

Global Assessment Taster

Take our Global Assessment Taster for a preview of our full assessment tool.

Sponsor statement for the Global Assessment

Our sponsor statements for the Global Assessment from Shell and Schneider Electric.

What is the Global Assessment?

The Global Assessment is a tool for multinational organisations to evaluate their performance and maturity in disability inclusion. It provides the insights needed to create or refine your global disability inclusion strategy that is focused, effective, and grounded in real data.

Participating organisations complete one question set for their Global Headquarters, and may also complete additional sets for country-level operations in up to eight countries. Each question set contains around 100 questions across 10 key business areas.

Country-level question sets are available for:

• Brazil,
• China,
• India,
• Poland,
• South Africa,
• United Arab Emirates,
• United Kingdom,
• United States of America.

There are two ways to complete the Headquarters question set:

• Self-assessment – Organisations complete the question set independently, without submitting evidence. This option is ideal for those getting started or not yet ready for formal verification.
• Verified – Organisations provide evidence for approximately 50% of the questions. Responses and evidence are reviewed and scored by a BDF team member. This offers a more robust and credible picture of your organisation’s performance, supporting stronger internal and external reporting.

All country-level question sets are available as self-assessment only.

Supporting resources and outputs

To support your organisation throughout the Global Assessment process, we provide a comprehensive package of guidance, tools, and expert advice:

• Tailored User Guides. Each question set comes with a dedicated User Guide, designed to reflect the specific operational context of the country it relates to, helping you complete the Assessment with confidence.
• Best practice toolkit. Our Toolkit highlights proven approaches to disability inclusion, supporting your organisation to address the areas for improvement identified through the Assessment.
• Dedicated expert support. Your assigned Business Partner or Senior Business Partner will be available to answer questions, provide clarification, and guide you through the process.

After completing the Global Assessment, you will receive:

• Detailed assessment scores. Individual scores for each of the question sets that will give you a clear view of your organisation’s performance across regions.
• Personalised assessment report. A comprehensive, auto-tailored report that breaks down your results by section, identifies areas of strength and risk, and offers actionable insights to inform your global disability inclusion strategy.
• Expert feedback session. When you complete the verified assessment, you have the option of having a feedback session with one of our expert Senior Business Partners. This session will offer a deeper analysis of your results, highlighting priority areas for improvement, and providing tailored recommendations to help move your strategy forward.

Who can complete the Global Assessment?

The Global Assessment is available to our Member and Partner organisations.

If your organisation is not already a Member or Partner, see our pages on the benefits of membership and how to join below.

Further information

If you have questions about completing the Global Assessment, email us on globalassessment@businessdisabilityforum.org.uk, or contact your Business Partner or Senior Business Partner.

Thank you

The development of the Global Assessment was made possible through the valuable input and collaboration of several leading global organisations and experts in inclusion and accessibility.

We are grateful for the support of:

• Shell
• Schneider Electric
• GSK
• Amazon
• Birgit Neu

Their insight and expertise have helped ensure that the Global Assessment is practical, globally relevant, and aligned with the real-world needs of multinational organisations working to advance disability inclusion.