Disability and the Digital Divide

Americans with disabilities are less than half as likely as their non-disabled counterparts to own a computer, and they are about one-quarter as likely to use the Internet. These are the conclusions of a new report¹ on computer ownership and Internet use among people with disabilities, based on December 1998 data from the Current Population Survey, a nationally representative sample of U.S. households. For the purpose of this analysis, disability is defined in terms of a limitation in the ability to work: those respondents reported to have a "health problem or disability which prevents them from working or which limits the amount or kind of work they can do" are counted as having disabilities. The statistics presented in this abstract apply to the population 15 years of age or older.

Computer technology and the Internet have a tremendous potential to broaden the lives and increase the independence of people with disabilities. To a population that is often physically as well as socially isolated, they can offer access to information, social interaction, cultural activities, employment opportunities, and consumer goods. Screen readers can provide blind people with instant access to vast quantities of on-line information, without having to wait for Braille or audiotape; voice recognition can enable people with limited manual dexterity to write letters, manage their finances, or perform work-related tasks. But, as the data in this abstract demonstrate, very few people with disabilities are able to take advantage of these possibilities.

As shown in Figure 1, just under one-quarter (23.9 percent) of people with disabilities have access to a computer at home, compared to just over half (51.7 percent) of their non-disabled counterparts. The gap in Internet use is even more striking: Only one-tenth (9.9 percent) of people with disabilities connect to the Internet, compared to almost four-tenths (38.1 percent) of those without disabilities.

Elderly people with disabilities are particularly unlikely to make use of these technologies. Among persons 65 years of age or older, only one-tenth (10.6 percent) of those with disabilities have computers at home, compared to one-quarter (25.3 percent) of those without disabilities. And only a tiny fraction (2.2 percent) of elderly people with disabilities use the Internet, a rate about one-quarter that of the non-disabled elderly population (8.9 percent).

Among the non-elderly (aged 15­64), the gaps in access to these technologies are less dramatic but still pronounced: 32.6 percent of those with disabilities have computers and 15.1 percent use the Internet, compared to 55.6 percent and 42.3 percent, respectively, of their counterparts without disabilities.

Educational attainment

The more education a person has, the more likely he or she is to own computer equipment and to use it to connect to the Internet. But regardless of the level of educational attainment, people with disabilities have much lower rates of computer ownership and Internet use than their non-disabled peers (Figure 2).

Only one-eighth (12.7 percent) of people with disabilities who have not graduated from high school own computers. This figure compares with one-third (34.5 percent) of non-high-school-graduates without disabilities, almost half (46.5 percent) of college graduates with disabilities, and three-quarters (73.4 percent) of college graduates without disabilities.

Only 2.4 percent of people with disabilities who lack high school diplomas use the Internet. Those without disabilities are almost 10 times as likely to connect to the Internet (22.5 percent). People with disabilities who have college degrees have still higher rates of Internet use (30.2 percent); but even this figure is less than half that for college graduates without disabilities, almost two-thirds (63.9 percent) of whom are Internet users.

Family income

People with and without disabilities who have low incomes are much less likely to have access to computer technology than are those with greater financial resources (Figure 3). But regardless of income, people with disabilities own computers significantly less often than do their non-disabled counterparts: half as often for persons with family incomes under $20,000 per year (11.0 percent vs. 22.2 percent), and two-thirds as often for those with family incomes of $20,000 or more (40.0 vs. 61.2 percent).

Within both income groups, use of the Internet also varies significantly by disability status. Only 4.9 percent of people with disabilities who have low family incomes use the Internet, compared to almost four times as high a proportion (19.0 percent) of the non-disabled population. Among people with moderate or high incomes, 16.6 percent of those with disabilities and 45.2 percent of those without disabilities connect to the Internet.

Race and ethnicity

Figure 4 presents statistics on household computer ownership and Internet access, broken down into racial and ethnic categories. The race and ethnicity of a household is determined by that of the person in whose name the dwelling is owned or rented; when a household contains one or more members with a disability, it is classified as a household with a disability.

Within each racial and ethnic group, the rate of computer ownership is much less when there is a disability present in the household than when there is not.² Among white households, those with disabilities are about half as likely to own computers as are those without (26.8 vs. 50.2 percent). Among African American households, only one-tenth (10.7 percent) of those with disabilities have computers, compared to one-quarter (26.3 percent) of households having no members with disabilities. Some 37.8 percent of Asian and Pacific Islander households with disabilities have computers, compared to 56.9 percent of those without disabilities. And among Latino households, 19.0 percent of those with disabilities have computers, versus 32.7 percent of those with no disability.

There are also large gaps in Internet access within the racial categories.³ Across the board, households having members with disabilities are roughly half as likely to be connected to the Internet as those with no members with disabilities (for white households, 13.3 vs. 30.7 percent; for black households, 4.8 vs. 11.4 percent; for Asian/Pacific Islander, 19.7 vs. 35.9 percent).

Among those households with disabilities, African American households are much less likely than white households to have a computer (10.7 vs. 26.8 percent) or have access to the Internet (4.8 vs. 13.3 percent).⁴ It is worth noting that the rates for white households with disabilities (26.8 percent of which have computers and 13.3 percent of which have access to the Internet) are roughly equal to those of African American households without disabilities (26.3 and 11.4 percent, respectively). Thus, disability and race can be seen to be equally significant factors in determining the household's likelihood of exposure to computer technology.

AVAILABILITY:

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