About My Term Research Paper

My term paper is New Media and Access for the Disabled – Boon or Bust? I chose this topic because I feel disabled people often don’t have equal opportunity as nondisabled people in various aspects of life. I think our society should put more attention on them, and try to eliminate barrier between disabled and nondisabled people. That was the first reason for me to choose this topic. Based on my understanding, new media and access are not assistive devices. Before, I only knew about how IT created assistive devices can help disabled people, such as, wheel chair, can, robot, and so forth. I had no idea about how new media and access can help disabled people before. I wanted to figure out it. This is my second reason for me to choose this topic. I focused on physical disabled people only, because they the majority of disabled people, and they have more restrictions.  After I chose my topic, I started my research. I used Google scholar for scholar articles. I also used our Baruch database, such as LexisNexis Academic, Factiva, FactFinder, and so on. They have both scholar and non-scholar resources. I also use information from Census Bureau for statistical data, and other presses which are more interesting, but less creditable than scholar ones. I focused on economic, educational, political, social, and shopping aspects of new media and access influence on physical disabled people on this term paper. I have found new media and access provide more benefits than disadvantages to physical disabled people. The main benefit is eliminating mobility problems. New media and access allow physical disabled people to work online at home, to make friends online, to take online courses, to vote online, and to purchase things online. They enable physical disabled people can do things which they can’t or have problem to perform before. I also found some disadvantages, such as less interaction between people, and less critical thinking.  What I have found through this research paper is that these disadvantages occur when physical disabled people totally give up moving outside.  If physical disabled people treat new media and access as complement of offline activities, the disadvantages will be eliminated.