I blogged this morning about the fact half of all people who have never used the internet are disabled people.

I'd be interested in getting people's thoughts on (a) What they know is happening to address this; (b) What this means for government's wish for "Digital by Default"; and (c) Examples of where an online-only mentality has caused major issues for disabled people and their organisations.

(I'm also just playing with Branch, 'cus we can!)

(wow! branch is so cool!)

is it possible to get a more detailed breakdown on a) ages; b) types of disability; c) where they are living (in terms of what support set-up, if there is any)?

I don't think it is in terms of breakdown within disabled people. General stats are available for online use - including age, location etc. - are here: ons.gov.uk

The LSE report on the emerging (emerged?) "digital underclass" is also a useful read: blogs.lse.ac.uk

I reckon that that data should be extractable (at least, on age it should) - might pester them using FOI.

Sounds good. Let me know if I can help, though I'm by no means an FOI expert! A novice, in fact!

Thanks for inviting me Rish, here's our blog which picked up on some of Rich's points lasa.org.uk

As noted, although the universal credit/digital by default agenda will clearly be a huge challenge in terms of delivery, I think it also presents an opportunity to build digital literacy, provided the investment is there and provided the government works closely with interested parties from across the piece.

Thanks Lasa! Do you know any good examples of stuff that is already happening specifically for disabled people that is addressing this area? (Part (a) to my question above.)

I've asked our ICT team your questions and asked them to let me know what they know, will get back to you in due course.

I have noticed that Apple has made big strides in the area of getting people that are disabled online. The software that they have built seems practical, but as someone who does not use these technologies I was wondering if they are useful.

Has anyone used or know someone that uses this software?
Do you think it helps them/you get online?

I'm sorry about the double post, I don't know what happened there. I will tell Branch about it now....

Thanks Cole - an interesting question. Wonder if anyone has any thoughts on this?

Here's some information from my colleagues from @LasaICT

Assisted Digital is a fairly worthy initiative, with its main focus being to ensure accessibility of government web services through a unified set of standards and end user testing, etc. There ia also a variety of web standards (W3C and BS 8878:2009) to guide web designers. The DDA covers the provision of services to the disabled, but is not specific on the question of web services.

Also, research from people like Abilitynet shows that awareness of disabled customers and accessible web design tends to be fairly low amongst those commissioning websites - usually folks from marketing and comms - and if accessibility doesn't get asked for, it doesn't get done. However, none of that answers the question of driving channel shift to actually getting disabled people online.

As to what's out there in terms of assistance to get online, there doesn't seem to be anything joined or coherent. Abilitynet did have a funded scheme which loaned disabled folks accessible computer kit to try out, but funding ran out some time ago. DigitalUnite does home tutoring, but this is predicated on the punter's ability to pay.

The only digital by default target we've seen relates to 80% of JSA claimants to be done online by 2013. Does this mean people will now skype their Jobcentre instead of turning up in person? HMRC is probably the best example of digital by default. There is a telephone helpdesk, but beyond that all official interactions with HMRC have to be done online - postal returns are liable to a fine! This impacts on disabled people in receipt of direct payments (which effectively turns them into small employers), forcing them to engage solely online.

You can also find a recent article we did looking at similar issues here ictknowledgebase.org.uk

What amazingly useful information - thanks for sharing!

There's been some more interest on this via Twitter, so I'm going to let people know about this discussion on there again.

I appreciate this may be stating the obvious, but part of the problem may be due to the expense of getting online. Technology may be coming down in price, but many disabled people tend to live on pretty tight budgets whilst having many additional expenses. Not only is there the monthly ISP costs, but the initial outlay for buying the equipment may prove too much. For those who have additional accessibility issues, such as visual impairments, the initial outlay alone would be quite sizeable.