ESZTER HARGITTAI'S RESEARCH The Disability Divide in Internet Access and Use [pdf] [click for full article] by Kerry Dobransky and Eszter Hargittai 2006. Information, Communnication and Society. 9(3):313-334. June. Abstract 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, we draw on nationally representative data about 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 to the Internet uses of the rest of the population; (3) how having a disability relates to and interacts with other social statuses (e.g. socio-economic status, age, gender) with regard to Internet use; and (4) what explains these trends. We draw on representative data collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census of the United States to answer these questions. We find 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 we control for socio-economic background, we find that people with hearing disabilities and those who have limited walking ability are not less likely to be Internet users. Our research enables a deeper understanding of both the use of the Internet by people with disabilities and the spread of new IT more generally. Outline I. Introduction II. The Benefits and Barriers of Internet Use by People with Disabilities  II.A Benefits  II.B Barriers III. Existing Empirical Investigations IV. Research Questions V. Data and Methodology VI. Internet Access and Use at Home VII. Explaining Differences in Internet Use VIII. Types of Internet Uses IX. Discussion and Conclusion Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank Jennifer Humensky for help with data management. Jeremy Freese and Peter Miller provided helpful suggestions. Hargittai acknowledges the support of the Northwestern University Communication Studies Department Research Fund. Please note This is a pre-print version of the article to appear in Information, Communication and Society. You may not post this document on any Web sites or distribute it on any mailing lists. You can point people to its online location here: http://www.eszter.com/research/a18-disabilitydivide.html.