Efficacy of Numeric Keypad for Computer Illiterates in Rural ICT

The world has a vast population of illiterate people who cannot read and write. There are globally about 781 million adults today who fall into this category of illiterate population. The number is even higher for computer illiterates, as not all literate masses qualify to be computer literate due to various compelling factors prevailing. There has been a lot of focus in recent times by both governmental and nongovernmental agencies to extend the proliferation of ICT among computer illiterates, especially in the rural areas. This focus is prevalent both worldwide and as well as in India. India has around 37% of world’s illiterate population. One of the major bottleneck and hindrance towards achieving penetration objective is due to the lack of a suitable Human Computer Interface (HCI) system addressing the specific needs of the computer illiterate section. In this study, we discuss the various aspects of input devices for this segment. We analyze the efficacy of a simplified numeric keypad as a HCI in an information dissemination system for computer illiterates specifically in the context of rural area usage.