2007 PhD Thesis Final Revised.pdf - Curtin University

understanding of what people with vision disabilities needed from IT and, in turn,
complete the objectives of the thesis. A complete list of questions contained in the
survey instrument can be found in Appendix B.
Section A, personal information, consisted of ten questions, each relating to
personal data about the survey respondent. These data were vital in providing
information on the effects of established disability divide factors and also in
detecting the impact of other personal factors. The first topic explored was the issue
of age. The age of an individual was of particular significance as the use of
computing and Internet technologies varies significantly depending on the age of an
individual. Location and gender information is also important in determining if
location or gender affects the results of the study. The data also provided a basis for
detecting bias in the sampling as the gender responses should be equal and the
location data should be evenly spread across Australia. Another theme within the
use of personal information was in regards to an individual’s living arrangements,
designed to determine if assistance was available within the house. The rate of
employment and income amongst the respondents were additional items. Given the
established factors of poverty and unemployment amongst people who were blind or
vision impaired, it was important to determine the extent of these factors in the
prevention of access to computing and Internet-based technologies.
Another major focus regarding personal information was to determine the
level of eyesight held by the surveyed individual and the type of condition faced by
an individual. As many AT devices cater for people who are either blind or vision
impaired, it would suggest that these groups have significantly different needs from
computing and Internet-technologies. As such these questions were designed to
determine if this was the case. The final focus of Section A was to determine the
education levels of the individual. The questions were designed to determine if the
previous or current educational levels of a blind or vision impaired individual
affected their ability to access computing or Internet-related technologies. In
essence, these questions were designed to determine if there were non-technical
issues which were leading to experiences which contribute to the disability divide.
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