A lot of work has been done about and a lot of attention has been given to the gap between those who have access and those who don't have access to information technologies, based on levels of income of the individuals and/or different levels of development of the countries they belong to. However, with the constant growth in broadband usage in developed countries and the resulting increase in the use of video-rich and flash or Macromedia based contents and the advent of the so-called Internet 2.0, a new digital divide is in the rise: the gap between those who can hear and see, and those who don't have that capacity. With the "original" text based Internet, most people who had access to it could see it, read it or have a software reading it for them, but with videos or even sound based content, the software that reads pages ignores the content and those with a hearing impairment cannot know what the video (or the person in the video) is talking about. In addition of the obvious social consequences of exclusion of those with different capacities, there are legal ones, since many countries have in place legislation to ensure that disabled people have access to most of the services that non-disabled people would have.
Having a flashy website could seem nice but...
Having a flashy website could seem nice but...
