Digital impairments: preliminary literature findings

Abstract

Digital impairments or digital limitations are a new way to frame the traditional field of the digital divide. Digital impairments focus on the individual (instead of comparing individuals) and on his/her multidimensional technology attributes (instead of adopting the unidimensional perspective of technology access). By means of a systematic literature review, we searched the literature on information technology, information science, and sociology in order to verify the assumptions of the digital impairments framework. Findings suggest that technology access is by far the primary focus of research, but an individual's cognitive and behavioral traits towards technology are increasingly being considered. Findings also show that the literature is not fully aware of the causal links assumed to exist between technology access, cognition and behavior, what may be an indication that the long-lived digital divide debate is surprisingly immature.