An Internet for Everyone :: Internet Web Cyberspace Essays

An Internet for Everyone Web Sight by Arati Bechtel an article in the Camarillo Star, explains how the Internet claim that Everyone can use the internet is wrong in many ways. For people who are mentally or physically disabled, it is much more difficult to get the same access and effectiveness out of the internet as for someone who is completely healthy. The internet is about 99% visual and for someone who is visually impaired, it would be extremely difficult to use the internet. Arati Bechtel explains in her article about some of the research done on accessibility to the internet for the visually impaired and says that there is some new software for the blind that has been make with a better design to help them use the internet as apposed to the old way of using brail. An example of these programs is called Jaws Screen Reader, it is a program that takes the text and reads it out loud to the user. This allows a blind person to log on and listen to their email or listen to some information that they could pos sibly be looking for. But theses programs are not nearly enough and not nearly developed enough to be effectively used by the disabled. Bechtel states that more needs to be done for the internet to be used by everyone. Howard Rheingolds theory about the internet in his article The Heart of the WELL is that by logging on to the WELL, everyone can find there place for support or use it as a parenting community. Whichever way you choose to go, everyone will always find a place to feel comfortable in a community and find support from other people. (Rheingold 154) He describes how he and others in a community had an ongoing conversation with the father of a girl that had an illness, and with the support of the WELL, the woman was able to recover from her illness Figueroa 2 and come to a full recovery. He also described how a parent could have a question about the health of their infant child, and acquire the information quicker by logging on to the WELL and asking the users, then by call ing a doctor directly. (Rheingold 151) Another use of the WELL was to help each other on different parenting techniques assisting parents to become better mothers and fathers all around the world.