Disability Access and E-Government

Despite a body of federal and state laws and policies promoting access to e-government for individuals with disabilities, wide variation exists across the states in the level of Web site accessibility. This study seeks to identify factors accounting for why some states are more responsive than other states to the needs of people with disabilities in their use of e-government. Drawing on demographic, political, administrative, and economic arguments, the authors account for a substantial share of the variation among states using a model based on measures of need, partisan control of government, fiscal capacity, and state spending. The single most important variable in the model is the strength of a state's own technical assistance policy; the way a policy is formulated in terms of clarity of objectives and enforcement capacity is significant. The authors' findings have clear implications for policy formulation and implementation, and they suggest several avenues for future research.

[1]  A. Nation.  Online: How Americans Are Expanding Their Use of the Internet , 2002 .

[2]  Richard F. Winters.  Party Control and Policy Change , 1976 .

[3]  D. West.  E‐Government and the Transformation of Service Delivery and Citizen Attitudes , 2004 .

[4]  Andrew Potter.  Accessibility of Alabama government Web sites , 2002 .

[5]  Costas Panagopoulos,et al.  Political implications of digital (e-) government , 2004 .

[6]  L. O'toole,et al.  TOWARD A THEORY OF POLICY IMPLEMENTATION: AN ORGANIZATIONAL PERSPECTIVE , 1979 .

[7]  A. Schneider,et al.  Improving Implementation Through Framing Smarter Statutes , 1990, Journal of Public Policy.

[8]  R. Mason.  Four ethical issues of the information age , 1986 .

[9]  J. Mcconnaughey.  Falling through the net II: New data on the digital divide , 1998 .

[10]  William G. Jacoby,et al.  Variability in State Policy Priorities: An Empirical Analysis , 2001, The Journal of Politics.

[11]  Shirley Ann Becker,et al.  E-Government Visual Accessibility for Older Adult Users , 2004 .

[12]  P. Jaeger.  The Social Impact of an Accessible E-Democracy , 2004 .

[13]  Owen Adams.  Falling through the Net: Defining the Digital Divide: A Report on the Telecommunications and Information Technology Gap in America , 2000 .

[14]  Donald F. Norris,et al.  Electronic government at the grass roots: contemporary evidence and future trends , 2003, 36th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2003. Proceedings of the.

[15]  M. J. Moon.  The Evolution of E-Government among Municipalities: Rhetoric or Reality? , 2002 .

[16]  M. J. Moon,et al.  Advancing E‐Government at the Grassroots: Tortoise or Hare? , 2005 .

[17]  Liz Lee-Kelley,et al.  E-Government and Social Exclusion: An Empirical Study , 2003, J. Electron. Commer. Organ..

[18]  J. Brudney,et al.  The Adoption of Innovation by Smaller Local Governments: The Case of Computer Technology , 1995 .

[19]  Telecommunications Board.  Information Technology Research, Innovation, and E-Government , 2002 .

[20]  Shirley Ann Becker,et al.  E-government usability for older adults , 2005, CACM.

[21]  C. G. Bell,et al.  Interest-Group and Party Influence Agents in the Legislative Process: A Comparative State Analysis , 1992, The Journal of Politics.

[22]  P. Norris.  Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide , 2001 .

[23]  Eric S. Fredin.  The Web of Politics: The Internet's Impact on the American Political System , 1999 .

[24]  Kelly D. Edmiston.  State And Local E-Government , 2003 .

[25]  Philip Calvert,et al.  Virtual Inequality: Beyond the Digital Divide , 2004 .

[26]  T. Dye,et al.  Politics, economics, and the public : policy outcomes in the American States , 1968 .

[27]  D. Braddock,et al.  Public financial support for disability at the dawn of the 21st century. , 2002, American journal of mental retardation : AJMR.

[28]  Steve Noble.  Web access and the law: a public policy framework , 2002 .

[29]  A. Chadwick.  Bringing E-Democracy Back In , 2003 .

[30]  D. Commerce.  Statistical abstract of the United States , 1978 .

[31]  Jeffrey L. Brudney,et al.  ACHIEVING ADVANCED ELECTRONIC GOVERNMENT SERVICES: Opposing Environmental Constraints , 2004 .

[32]  P. Jaeger.  Beyond Section 508: The spectrum of legal requirements for accessible e-government Web sites in the , 2004 .

[33]  Kenneth L. Kraemer,et al.  Information technology and transitions in the public service: a comparison of Scandinavia and the United States , 1994, Scand. J. Inf. Syst..

[34]  Mark A Smith.  The Nature of Party Governance: Connecting Conceptualization and Measurement , 1997 .

[35]  Paul T. Jaeger,et al.  E-government around the world: lessons, challenges, and future directions , 2003, Gov. Inf. Q..

[36]  Joan C. Steyaert.  Measuring the performance of electronic government services , 2004 .

[37]  Tony J. Carrizales.  E-GOVERNMENT: RECENT PUBLICATIONS , 2004 .

[38]  Caroline J. Tolbert,et al.  Innovating in Digital Government in the American States , 2003 .

[39]  Michael Margolis,et al.  Politics as Usual: The Cyberspace `Revolution′ , 2000 .

[40]  Scott McCoy,et al.  Web site accessibility: an online sector analysis , 2004, Inf. Technol. People.

[41]  Steven Maynard-Moody,et al.  Beyond Implementation: Developing an Institutional Theory of Administrative Policy Making , 1989 .

[42]  Donald F. Norris,et al.  Is Your Local Government Plugged In? Highlights of the 2000 Electronic Government Survey , 2001 .

[43]  U. C. Bureau.  Statistical Abstract of the United States , 2004 .

[44]  H. Brinton Milward,et al.  Electronic Government: Linking Citizens to Public Organizations Through Technology , 1996 .

[45]  J. Woody Stanley,et al.  The Effects of Internet Use on Political Participation , 2003, DG.O.

[46]  P. Guilday,et al.  The book of the states , 1972 .

[47]  Robert D. Atkinson,et al.  Clear Thinking on the Digital Divide , 2001 .