How People with Developmental Disabilities Navigate the Internet

We live at a time when the Internet is used increasingly for communication, for information, and for the exchange of goods and services. Questions arise about how people with learning disabilities make use of this new technology. In this article, Bjorn Harrysson, with two of his colleagues, A. Svensk and G. I. Johansson, from the Department of Design Sciences at the Lund Institute of Technology in Sweden, explores the opportunities and difficulties experienced by members of this group when navigating the Internet. Harrysson, Svensk and Johansson observed seven people, aged between 15 and 44 and with mild to moderate developmental disabilities, as they navigated between different web pages using the general tools of Microsoft Internet Explorer Web Browser. The authors describe some of the strategies that were used for moving within and between web pages and for opening web pages, carrying out searches and finding preferred web sites. The results of the study are partly optimistic. The people involved made good use of many of the features of the general software. They experienced greater difficulties when it became necessary to use text to navigate and explore the huge potential of the Internet. Harrysson, Svensk and Johansson close their article by making a series of recommendations for developments that would facilitate ease of access and independence in the use of the Internet for people with developmental disabilities