Even in 2015, disabled people still disproportionately excluded from the internet

Source: Office for National Statistics (pdf)

Here at arbitrary constant we have previously been interested in internet usage statistics, particularly when it comes to disabled people. In June 2012 we reflected that half of all people who have never used the internet are disabled people. Where are we now?

The latest ONS internet usage statistics are out, and things look like they’ve only moderately moved in a positive direction for disabled people.

Overall, the number of people using the internet continues to increase: 85% of all adults had used the internet in the last three months (to March 2015), an increase of 1% since last quarter.

Some 11% of adults (5.9m people) have never used the internet (to March 2015). This is a reduction of 6% since March 2011, which remains encouraging.

Of these 5.9 million adults who had never used the internet, 3.0 million were aged 75 years and over. This represents 33% of people aged over 75. Similarly, 3.3 million disabled adults had never used the internet, which represents 27% of disabled adults.

In June 2012, 34% of people over 75 and 34% of disabled adults hadn’t used the internet. Thus, there has been a 4% and 7% increase in the number of people over 75 and disabled people using the internet respectively. Nevertheless, it remains the case that over half of all the people who have never used the internet are disabled people.

This is made clear in graph at the top of this post, which shows the proportion of non-internet users depending on whether they’re a disabled person or not over the last two years. Thus, whilst things are moving in the right direction, and consistently with, say, people aged over 75, disabled people are still disproportionately failing to reap the benefits of the internet, even in 2015.

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Half of all people who have never used the internet are disabled people

The latest internet usage statistics have been published for up to June 2012.

(Aside: the Office for National Statistics really should be congratulated for publishing such useful stats and breakdowns each quarter.)

Overall, they show the total number of people using the internet is increasing: it’s 4% more than to March this year and 10% higher than this time last year. This is great news, and testament to the great work organisations like Go On UK  are doing.

The focus on who isn’t using the internet tends to be on older people. Though understandable, my focus is always on disabled people, and the figures show why:

• To June 2012, there were 3.91 million disabled adults who had never used the internet
• This 3.91m disabled adults represents around 34% of all disabled adults, i.e. 1 in 3 disabled adults has never used the internet
• The equivalent figure for non-disabled people is around 10%, i.e. 1 in 10 non-disabled adults has never used the internet
• Thus, disabled people are three times more likely never to have used the internet than non-disabled people
• The 3.91m disabled adults who have never used the internet represents just under half of the 7.82m adults who had never used the internet, i.e. nearly 1 in 2 of all people who have never used the internet are disabled people.

By way of comparison: 38% of adults aged 65 years and over had never used the Internet, representing 2.12m people, i.e. 2 in 5.

Thus, in relative terms, older people and disabled people’s use of the internet is about the same (38% to 34% respectively). In absolute terms, there are around 1.8m more disabled people who have never used the internet than people over 65.

Useful to keep in mind, especially if we’re moving towards Digital by Default and online information directories in social care…