ABSTRACT
There is no doubt that the rapid growth of ICTs over the last 20 to 30 years has had a major positive impact on the lives of many disabled people. For visually impaired (VI) people, some of the earliest uses of computer technology enhanced access to information both by facilitating the production of large print and by enhancing the rapid transcription from text to braille. Developments such as suck-blow keys for paraplegic people and text-to-speech systems for blind people enable disabled people to use computers directly. The growth of the Internet and the more general use of the World Wide Web since 1993, though causing many problems along the way, now provide disabled people not just with a window on the information world but one that they can use without acknowledging their impairment to anyone else. As each new technology is introduced, projects are initiated that seek to find uses to address disabled people’s needs. The nagging question is why, with all of this technology available, do surveys of disabled people still show many of them living in poverty, isolated from their social communities?
