Bangkok’s next election is getting closer. City-development networks have continued working together as a bloc. Over the past four years, from the days when we all helped shout loudly, today we can start to see, roughly, how much the city has changed for the better.
The goal we should be aiming for is a city where people can simply live as they should, work, and pay taxes. But that dream still seems like something we may have to wait a long time for.
Under the Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand, “everyone has equal rights and freedoms.” So there is no excuse: city development must support everyone, in every physical condition.
In the real world, perhaps one truth we have to accept is that minority groups need to gather their voices and combine their power if they want to create the change they need. Today, let’s look at the statistics on people with disabilities and older people in Thailand.
DEP’s central disability registry, as of 1 April 2025, counts only people holding valid disability ID cards. Bangkok has 109,199 people: mobility/physical disability 45,499, hearing/communication 24,587, more than one type 9,977, mental/behavioral 9,938, intellectual 7,966, visual 5,080, autism 4,296, and learning disability 1,856.
Nationwide, there are 2,232,140 valid disability-card holders: mobility/physical disability 1,158,092, hearing/communication 430,685, visual 171,222, mental/behavioral 164,285, intellectual 144,896, more than one type 118,046, autism 27,173, and learning disability 17,741.
For older people, DOPA civil-registration data for September 2025 shows 1,304,743 people aged 60+ in Bangkok and 13,994,018 nationwide. This is population by age, not a disability count. Separately, the NSO 2022 survey estimated that Thailand had 4,192,291 people with disabilities, or 6.0% of the population. That is survey data, not disability-card registration.
In a society like this, if we stay silent and look away, things around us will keep happening — and many more people will continue to be left behind.
Let’s do one simple thing: join together and raise our voices, loudly. Please share this.
❤️
Sources: DEP, DOPA, NSO