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The Information Society

Information Society, The
Volume 26, 2010 - Issue 1
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ARTICLES

A Multidimensional Analysis of the Disability Digital Divide: Some Evidence for Internet Use

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Pages 48-64
Received 26 Jun 2008
Accepted 12 Sep 2009
Published online: 19 Jan 2010
 

Over the last few years, information and communication technologies have become an essential part of daily life, affecting education, employment, and leisure, among other activities. Nonetheless, many individuals still reap few or no benefits from these technologies, and there are resilient gaps in their use. Within this larger context, the authors examine the Internet digital divide between people with and without disabilities from a multidimensional approach. Rather than analyzing the gap in terms of “haves” and “have-nots,” a range of Internet-related dimensions—affordability, motivation and attitudes, skills, usage, and others—is taken into account.

We thank the editor and the anonymous referees for their interesting comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this work.

Notes

1. This amount is equivalent to half of what the United States currently spends annually for medical care for all its citizens ($1.8 trillion).

2. Several studies have shed light on how accessible technologies could be viewed as profitable commodities for both businesses and the economy at large (National Council of Disability 2004; Tusler 2005 Tusler, A. 2005. How to make technology work: A study of best practices in United States electronic and information technology companies. Disability Studies Quarterly, 25 http://www.dsq-sds.org/article/view/551/728/(accessed January 25, 2007)[Crossref] [Google Scholar]; European Commission 2007a; Maskeri 2007). According to McCabe (2007) McCabe, E. 2007. From digital divide to digital diversity: The imperative for inclusive information and communication technologies. Global Initiative for Inclusive ICTs http://dev.g3ict.com/design/js/tinymce/filemanager/userfiles/File/Proceedings%20-%20PDFs/A_Emilie_McCabeNY.pdf(accessed June 25, 2008) [Google Scholar], if we consider the purchasing power of the disability community in the United States alone, we see that persons with disabilities represent about $225 billion of disposable income.

3. The survey did not include questions on the type of disability.

4. The odds ratio is a measure of strength of association between variables, usually reported in logit regressions (Hosmer and Lemeshow 2000 Hosmer, D. W. and Lemeshow, S. 2000. Applied logistic regression, New York: Wiley Series in Probability and Statistics. [Crossref] [Google Scholar]). It is reckoned for each variable as exp(β), in which β is the estimated coefficient. In this case, the inverse of the odds ratio is reckoned for an easier interpretation of disability and gender gaps.

5. To assess the appropriateness of factor analysis we use the Kaiser–Mayer–Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy, which requires values greater than 0.5 for a satisfactory factor analysis to proceed. In our case, the KMO measure with a value of 0.8 suggests that the data structure is adequate for factor analysis. On this basis, factors are extracted using principal components extraction method. To facilitate interpretability, this is followed by varimax rotation. The number of factors to be extracted is decided according to the eingenvalue criterion—that is, all factors having eigenvalues greater than one are retained.

6. The question in the survey was formulated as the following: “Do you think that the Internet has made you more informed about health matters?” There were three possible answers: “a lot more informed,” “somewhat informed,” and “not at all better informed.” Results show that there is a significant association between having a disability and feeling more informed (chi-square statistic takes a value of 11.248, which is significant at the 1 percent level).

7. The Spanish Avanza Plan can be viewed at http://www.planavanza.es/.

8. Some of these accessibility problems have already started to be addressed. For instance, T. V. Raman, an engineer at Google, is working on a touch-screen phone for people with visual impairments (New York Times 2009).

9. The previously mentioned EU disability plan for 2008–9 stated the creation of a European academic network of disability experts to provide scientific background and support through fact-finding and the gathering of evidence and recommendations relevant to implementing policy measures, but this statement has not been translated into specific actions.

10. For instance, Project BIT (http://www.proyectobit.com) has been successful in fostering the use of ICT among Spanish children with intellectual disabilities. The project Yugra and Khanty-Mansyiak (HMAO) aims at providing ICT training hospitalized children in Russia (see http://www.epractice.eu/cases/hmao/).