Bridging the Digital Divide: Using Free Open-Source Tools to Expand Access to Shared-Use Computers in Schools and Libraries.

Abstract

The use of computers in everyday life has moved from hobby and technical professional use to being essential to almost all activities in people's lives. However, not everyone has a computer themselves or access to the internet at home. To address this, society provides computers that people can use at school, in libraries, at job centers, in community centers, and at government service centers. However, these are not accessible to those who need assistive technologies (AT), and they are not allowed to install the AT they need to use the computers. This puts people who need to use AT at a severe disadvantage to their peers at best and, at worst, prevents them from participating at all where computer use is required. This is a problem when a person is required to use a particular computer instead of their own and is a total barrier to computer use for those who do not own their own computer. Proposed is the installation of a free utility on all public or shared use computers that both a) exposes the built-in accessibility features in computers to make them easier to discover and use, and b) allows AT users to have any AT the need automatically installed on any computer they encounter, and then set up just for them. When they are done, the AT disappears.