Abstract
Over the past few decades, the use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) as a beneficial tool in the lives of people with disabilities has been brought to public attention. It has been proposed that "people with disabilities achieve fuller social participation, especially in terms of economic self-reliance, with ICT use." Japan's welfare policy, introduced recently, compels disabled people to use ICT in order to gain and conduct their employment. Economic self-reliance is regarded as a prerequisite for the social participation of people with disabilities, and obtaining employment is the consequential and implicit goal. Acquisition of ICT usages has been seen as the key that will help disabled people to achieve social participation. This paper intends to present the results of an investigation that was conducted into the effects of ICT on disabled people's social participation. This investigation was based upon a log analysis of the online mailing list (ML) as well as fieldwork conducted in the offline arena. This fieldwork in the offline arena revealed that there were many social barriers that could not be overcome through ICT use, even by those with consummate ICT skills. In contrast, we observed that an "online community" allowed each member of the disabled working community to communicate his or her living situation, a communication that broke down barriers and encouraged social participation. These results led us to the conclusion that ICT is not the "highway" to the "promised land" of social participation; instead the evidence suggests that ICTs can instigate a "pathway" to an actual community of disabled people.
