World Institute on Disability

The World Institute on Disability (WID) is partnering with the California Emerging Technology Fund to annually survey Californians with disabilities to determine how high-speed Internet adoption rates compare to the overall state population and to identify the factors leading to low adoption rates. This marks the second year of a three-year survey built to more fully understand Internet adoption trends among this population and to develop public policy recommendations to help drive adoption higher among people with disabilities.

Results from the second year of the three-year survey showed that among a revised group of surveyed Californians with disabilities there has been a slight increase in those reporting having high-speed Internet access: from 62% of respondents in 2014 to 66 percent of respondents in 2015. However, this was lower than the 79% of the overall population reported by the Field Research Corporation and CETF. The price point at which many households without high-speed Internet say they would consider subscribing to a service is $10 per month. Not including limited-time deals, residential high-speed Internet costs between $50 and $70 a month, and sometimes much higher, in California. In 2015, we surveyed a second cohort of 100 people with disabilities and found that 66% had access to high-speed Internet, up 4% from a year ago, yet still trailing the larger population by 13 percentage points.

• More than one-third of Californians with Disabilities (34%) do not have high-speed Internet at home, compared to 21% of the overall population.
• A large percentage of non-Internet subscribers say that $10 a month is what they can afford.
• Over half of all 2015 respondents say that their disability makes it difficult to use a device to go online.
• About one third (34%) of respondents use an assistive device or software to access the Internet, increasing the cost to get online at home.