« Dispatches From The Culture Wars | Main | One Last Bioethics Lecture For The Week »

I may be meeting with a City of Minneapolis official in the next few weeks to discuss plans for making the city's forthcoming WiFi network accessible and affordable to people with disabilities.  Here's the idea I'm currently toying with.  The city will be contracting with one or more private providers to operate the network.  I'd like to see the contract include a provision that requires the provider(s) to set aside a certain amount of money for an "assistive technology fund."  People with disabilities who live in Minneapolis and meet certain income guidelines could access the fund to purchase a computer and/or assistive technology to use with that computer.  In addition, the monthly subscription fee for accessing the network would be discounted for qualifying people with disabilities.  I'd love to see a computer distribution system for all low-income residents, but people with disabilities face additional challenges because they may not be able to easily get to a public terminal in a library or community center.  Furthermore, those computers may not be equipped with the appropriate assistive technology specific to a person's disability. 

 

My first task is to research any existing best practices in terms of making municipal WiFi accessible and affordable to people with disabilities; I'm not expecting to find much since municipal WiFi is still a nascent concept.  But anyone with ideas or leads on best practices should definitely send them my way. 

As usual, Mark, you're full of great ideas!

Those sound like some great ideas. As I understand it, there will be a "digital divide" fund to improve internet accessibility. Philadelphia is further along with their WiFi initiatives, and Minneapolis seems to be modeling their plans off Philly, so that would probably be a good place to look for examples.

check out this site: http://www.accessonmainstreet.net/taxonomy/categories/policy/public-sector-purchases/