EditU - A national online support center for people with disabilities

In an effort to provide digital divide support for people with disability, I have been project director since 1999 of Project EditU. EditU at http://www.editu.org serves as a national online support center for people with disabilities and the professionals that serve them. EditU is a public-private consortium including: the Association of Rehabilitation Programs in Computer Technology (ARPCT) the Commission for Accreditation of Rehabilitation (CARF), the Educational Leadership, Research and Technlogy Department and the Career Connection Research Center at my Western Michigan University, and Skillsoft, Inc.m the world largest provider of online learning content.

The results is that EditU offers corporate quality, tuition-free, multi-modal learning in a variety of career related areas. Information Technology, Office Skills, Business Skills, Professional Development and Personal Development are offered to people with disabilities and to the professionals that serve them. ARPCT is an international association dedicated to bridging the digital divide since it started in 1977 under IBM sponsorship. It is estimated that over 2o,000 graduates of ARPCT affilated programs (see http://www.arpct.org) have been trained and found employment to become independent tax paying citizens. Currently, there are about 62 community colleges, technical institutes, state support comprehensive rehabilitation centers, colleges, universities and post secondary organizations that are members of ARPCT and the EditU consortium.

EditU numbers for 2006.

During the 2006 calendar year, EditU had a total of 4,873 users with a cumulative training time of 1073 days, 23 hours and 34 minutes. EditU users completed a total of 2,111 entire courses and 152 full simulations and 57 test preps. The number were about the same as 2005. During the previous 2005 calendar year, 3,398 courses were completed with 348 completed SkillSims and 54 Test Prep Exams given to a total of 4,912 users that spend 1,096 days, 3 hours and 48 cumulative time on the EditU/Skillsoft learning management system.

An Article on the disability divide in Internet Access and Use

Kerry Dobransky & Eszter Hargittai
THE DISABILITY DIVIDE IN INTERNET
ACCESS AND USE
The increasing spread of the Internet holds much potential for enhancing
opportunities for people with disabilities. However, scarce evidence exists to
suggest that people with disabilities are, in fact, participating in these new
developments. Will the spread of information technologies (IT) increase equality
by offering opportunities for people with disabilities? Or will a growing reliance
on IT lead to more inequality by leaving behind certain portions of the
population including people with disabilities? In this paper, the authors draw
on nationally representative data regarding Americans’ Internet uses to (1) identify
the extent to which people with disabilities are embracing use of the Internet;
(2) how their use of the Internet compares with the Internet uses of the rest of the
population; (3) how having a disability relates to and interacts with other social
statuses (e.g. socioeconomic status, age, gender) with regard to Internet use; and
(4) what explains these trends. They draw on representative data collected by the
Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census of the United States to answer these
questions. It is found that people with disabilities are less likely to live in households
with computers, are less likely to use computers and are less likely to be
online. However, once socioeconomic background is controlled for, it is found
that people with hearing disabilities and those who have limited walking
ability are not less likely to be Internet users. This research enables a deeper
understanding of both the use of the Internet by people with disabilities and
the spread of new IT more generally. For the full article see:
http://www.eszter.com/research/pubs/dobransky-hargittai-disabilitydivide.pdf