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Access and Inclusion through Technology

Access Technology - Today and Tomorrow

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The State of the Internet - and accessibility

Interesting perspective on the current use of the Internet from Jesse Thomas on Vimeo





Now this is quite interesting showing the scale of use of the internet, especially social media and rich media. We can see the discrepency between countries around the world and speed of use etc.

What the video doesnt really say is the levels of usage amongst disabled users in each sector, and what factors in each influence their take up. Its very easy to assume that similar issues face all users or all disabled users regardless of geography.

What we face is a matrix of barriers for disabled users

One one axis we have all the barriers that related to generic access to technology, cost, availability of broadband, censorship etc

On a second axis we have issues of access to a platform and availability of assistive technologies. That includes the extent to which we have availability of free and open source solutions as well as awareness and funding for commercial solutions 

On the third axis we have design and accessibilty - looking at the available of accessible content that will effectively interact with the assistive technologies. 

Jess3's video analysis is disturbing enough in analysing the growth of social media and dependency, unsettling in the implications of inequalities of access to knowledge in the future - but for those with a disability - it hardly begins to tell the story.    

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