I'm sure that most of you would agree that the Internet has a major impact on how we learn, how we work, how we shop and more. It is hard to imagine our lives without it. We can only expect that more and more of our lives will be spent in cyberspace. Who knows we may even be voting on-line for a future President.
Yet for many individuals for many reasons the Internet is not part of their lives because it is simply not accessible to them. These are individuals for whom technology has the potential to be enormously beneficial.
Congress has tried to address the issue of universal access in this country by providing funding for public Internet connections in schools and public libraries (Telecommunications Act of 1996). But is that truly universal access?
The Falling Through the Net: Toward Digital Inclusion report, published by the Commerce Department in October 2000, concludes
that more than half of all households have computers and that more than half of all Americans will be using the Internet by the middle of
2001. Nevertheless, a digital divide remains or has expanded slightly in some cases, even while Internet access and computer ownership
are rising rapidly for almost all groups. For example, the most recent data show that large gaps remain for Blacks and Hispanics when
measured against the national average Internet penetration rate (Blacks 23.5% penetration rate, Hispanics 23.6%, compared to 41.5%
nationally). While you need not read the entire document you should Part 1 and sections of Part 3.More reports on the digital divide.
Even if we were to suppose that everyone had access to the Internet, a more important question might be: Can everyone use the technology?
Sites to visit:
MIT's Adaptive Technology for Information and Computing page
While these sites focus on adapting technology for those with physical disabilities perhaps universal usability is even broader. For an introduction to this topic see:
Universal Usability (Read through all the sections; it is fairly short.)
Should universal access or universal usability be a right?
Our guest for part of the seminar will be Kathy Cahill, Coordinator of the Adaptive Technology for Information and Computing (ATIC) lab here at MIT.
last updated 30 November 2001 by joanne@mit.edu