| dc.description.abstract | Since the 15 percent of global population lives with some type of disability, it is critical for the Information technology industry to design and develop specific software that can help the disabled community to enjoy the full benefits of modern digital society. Human with different form of disabilities and in specifically people who are working with the impairment are not having equal opportunities to accessing Information technology and Internet access compare to the non-disabled population in the world and it is common for Sri Lankan disabled community . Comparative with other countries Disability among young generation is high in Sri Lanka. The main reason for this cause is until the year 2009 Sri Lanka had 30 years of humanitarian operations in the country. Most of them were permanently disabled while working in the National security forces in the country. The authorized governing body of the Information Communication Technology (ICT) in the country which is, Information Communication Technology Agency (ICTA), develops infrastructure and facilities increases the country digital literacy rate but according to the preliminary research study statistically prove that still disabled community experiences difficulties in use of ICT. This issue is known as the disability digital divide. To bridge this issue will improve the quality of life of disabled community in Sri Lanka This study proposes a framework to develop technology focused educational model to bridge the disability digital divide in the country and align them in the e-government strategy. The study is basically consisting with two phases. In the first phase of the study examined the current technology adaption among the differently abled community in Sri Lanka. The second phase examines how the modern new technologies such as Internet of things (IoT) successfully solving the issues in globally and develop a framework to overcome the Sri Lankan disability digital divide. First phase of these study two set of samples were interviewed to identify the current disability digital divide in the country. Initially 314 participants were interviewed and in the second phase of this study another set of 180 disabled participants were interviewed to identify the real problems and issues faced by the differently abled community. Sample selected from different communities, different disabled categories and different geographical locations. Findings indicated that basic level ICT technologies used by the differently abled community are statistically low. Therefore In the second phase of the study focuses on how could Internet of things (IoT) concept could successfully apply to overcome the disabled digital divide in the country. By bridging the gap through IoT concept, this community also could be an effective contributor for the national development process. There- fore, the purpose of this paper is to analyze how people with visual, hearing and physical impairments can interact with and benefit from the IoT. Initial phase 01 of this study publish in the Kotelawala Defence University (KDU) IRC 2014. | en_US |
