Independent Living data the whole network can use
ILDATA.org puts the public record of every Center for Independent Living in one place, gives Statewide Independent Living Councils and Centers ready-made accessible surveys, and proposes common definitions so results from one state can be compared with another.
Built to WCAG 2.1 AA and tested with screen readers, because the people this data is about read it too.
Three things in one place
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Data
Nine years of Program Performance Reports for every Center for Independent Living, normalized into one panel, with reach measured against Census disability population by state and county.
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Instruments
A Consumer Satisfaction Survey and a Community Needs Survey, written in plain language, built as real forms that work with a screen reader, on a phone, on paper, and without JavaScript. Host them here with your own coded links, or print them.
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Standards
Common definitions for "consumer served", "goal achieved" and the other words every report uses differently, a shared question bank with stable identifiers, and an open response format, so data pools instead of piling up.
Why this exists
The federal data is public but hard to use
The Administration for Community Living publishes a spreadsheet of every Center's Program Performance Report each year. The columns change from year to year, the headers carry typos, and a Center's state is not always the state it serves. Nobody had joined the years together so a council could see its own Centers against 350 peers. Now it is joined, and the method is published.
Every council writes the same survey again
Each State Plan for Independent Living must rest on a needs assessment and consumer satisfaction results. Most councils write their own instruments from scratch, often as tables that a screen reader cannot navigate. A shared, tested instrument with stable question identifiers means less work and results that can be compared.
Reach needs a denominator
Serving two hundred people is excellent or negligible depending on how many people with disabilities live in the area. The Census Bureau publishes that number for every county. ILDATA.org puts it next to each Center's consumer count and shows how a council can turn it into a State Plan indicator.
Numbers that do not agree are a finding
A Center's report, its state's report and its audit describe the same dollars and the same people, and nothing requires them to match. A data quality check across every Center turns that from a complaint into a measurement.
Who it is for
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Statewide Independent Living Councils
Monitor your State Plan with your Centers' own federal reports, field a needs assessment without building one, and draft measurable indicators from Census data for your state.
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Centers for Independent Living
See how your reported numbers sit against Centers of similar size, run a consumer satisfaction survey your consumers can actually complete, and export the results.
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Designated State Entities and advocates
Check the reconciliation between what Centers report receiving and what the state reports paying, and see which measures the public record can and cannot support.
Start in three steps
- Look up your state. Every jurisdiction has a page with its Centers, nine-year trend and county disability population. States and territories.
- Pick an instrument. Read it, listen to it with your screen reader, print the plain-text master. Instrument library.
- Ask for a coded link. We set up your organization and give each partner, flyer or island its own link, so you can see where responses come from. Use an instrument in your network.