Disabled people's internet experiences revealed through Digital Inclusion Project survey
The English Federation of Disability Sport is working with the Disability Action Alliance (DAA) on the Digital Inclusion Project. The working group is aware of the key role that technology plays in people’s lives. With more and more services being delivered on the internet, the Digital Inclusion project group was keen to learn more about disabled people’s experiences in using the internet. The results from the survey are now available.
The group developed a survey to gather information that could help to:
- improve disabled people’s digital engagement,
- help those who provide digital services to improve their digital offer, and
- continue to raise digital engagement awareness.
The survey ran from 15 July to 25 September 2015. There were 310 responses. Of the 97.7% respondents who use the internet, four in ten (39%) say they often feel excluded from the internet. The key findings included:
- Four in ten (44.1%) say some sites are difficult to navigate around because of their impairment or health condition and Four in ten (35.6%) say they find some sites confusing.
- The move towards mobile responsive sites is clear with eight in ten (77.7%) saying they use the internet on other devices like phones and iPads.
- Disabled people use the internet regularly for shopping (76.1%), banking (70.5%), listening to music 61.8%, YouTube 57.8%and social media/ staying in touch (74.1%). The top reason is searching for information, with nearly all respondents (96.4%) choosing that option.
- Disabled people's experiences could be made better through various ways. Information being presented more clearly, links more descriptive, headings properly used was the most popular answer (69.1%).
The report is below in Word and PDF formats:
Digital Inclusion survey report – Word version
Digital Inclusion survey report – PDF version
