Technology is bridging the gap between people: A case study of visually impaired users

SWANS (Semantic Web Accessibility Network Services) is a research project which addresses issues related to the immobility of people who are visually impaired (VI's). Its aim is to resolve their issues by deploying Semantic Web Services (SWS). This paper presents the results of a study to examine that technology is bridging the people together or creating a gap among the VI's community. This study was completed with the collaboration of Cambridge Online Pathways project. The author used direct observations, open-ended interviews, participant observations and physical artifacts as sources of evidence to collect data. In order to make the data more reliable a multiple-case study approach was employed. Therefore, our study group consisted of fifteen visually impaired people. In this group four were blind and the remaining eleven had low vision. All participants were eighteen years old or above.