Benefits » Enabling People With Disabilities High speed Internet
empowers people with disabilities to become more independent. An
Internet connection with enough speed to allow two-way voice,
data, and video transfer can remove barriers that keep people
with disabilities from participating in everyday activities such
as employment, education, civic responsibilities and social
connection. According to the 2008 U.S. Census, 50 million
Americans have some kind of disability. Not only does this
substantial segment of our population stand to benefit greatly
from universally accessible broadband, but we all benefit from
the increased participation when more people are broadband
users. Expert studies find that Americans with disabilities
currently use the Internet approximately half as much as those
without disabilities and their rate of adoption lags behind that
of the general population. This is true for people with
disabilities in both urban and rural environments. With 60
percent of working-age persons with disa