e-Society Accessibility: Identifying Research Gaps

Abstract

This paper draws on a literature study on research on accessibility. The first part categorizes the literature found according to different approaches, focused on where one accentuates the solutions. The second part briefly discusses some implications of the findings with respect to e-government and e-democracy, and gaps in current research that should be filled. The paper concludes that in order to further the discussion of the accessibility topic in view of the electronic government agenda, there is a need for making the discussion of “accessibility” more sophisticated so as to distinguish availability (physical access) from approachability (mental access) for the reason of not by default taking progress in one field (typically availability), integrating research from several fields to bring more nuances to the different issues and including research on organizational perspectives to complement the current focus on technology and government regulation.