Public Information Services for People with Disabilities: An Accessible Multimedia Platform for the Diffusion of the Digital Signature

Introduction

Skelcher (1992) pointed out that since the mid-1980s, the public sector has undergone a service revolution as a result of the application of IT. As a consequence of this new approach, since the mid-1990s, governmental agencies had high expectations about the take up and increasing usage of electronic service channels (Ebbers, Pieterson & Noordman, 2008). According to Gil-García and Pardo (2005), technology provides two main opportunities for government: increased operational efficiency by reducing costs and increasing productivity, and better quality of services provided by government agencies. In this scenario, Electronic government (E-government) refers to governments’ use of technology, particularly Web-based Internet applications to enhance the access to and delivery of government information and service to citizens, business partners, employees, other agencies, and government entities (Layne & Lee, 2001). Nearly every country in the world — from the poorest to the richest — has developed some form of it, and an extensive literature on the subject continues to grow (Ruth & Doh, 2007). Diverse studies have reported the benefits of the application of E-government. These include improved citizen involvement and contribution to government-related issues (Barnes & Vidgen, 2003), more transparent relationships (González, Gasco & Llopis, 2007), improved operations (Brunschwig, 2006), better government-citizen communication (Tolbert and Mossberger, 2006), lower overall costs (Fahnbulleh, 2005) and the improvement of citizens' perception of the public sector (Tolbert & Mossberger, 2006), among numerous other advantages. On the other hand, researchers have identified many open issues which are hindering the adoption of E-government in many countries. See Sarikas and Weerakkody (2007) for a comprehensive review. Within the pending issues identified by research, one particular issue emerged which is a crucial topic for the current work. This topic concerns guaranteeing the access to E-services from the perspective of accessibility. This requirement has been pointed out in a number of distinct studies, such as Fang (2002), Jaeger and Thompson (2003), Jaeger (2004), Al-Omari and Al-Omari (2006), Shy (2007) and Jaeger (2008). The importance of accessibility to E-government services is considered one of the criteria for the quality of the services offered. In fact, accessibility has become a fundamental characteristic which is included as a criterion for evaluation of the services offered by government bodies (see Bertot & Jaeger, 2006; Esteves & Joseph, 2008). Particularly, initiatives coordinated by the EU (European Union) are being carried out to guarantee E-inclusion to people with disabilities. A broad report of the EU efforts can be found in Timmers (2008), or detailed separately for each member country of the EU in Strejcek and Strejcek (2002).

Nowadays, it is a fundamental challenge for government administrations to develop a diffusion strategy such that services can be communicated and available to all citizens. Unless citizens know what is available from the E-government, they will not likely seek to use its services, defeating the purpose of the development of E-government information and services (Jaeger & Thompson, 2003). According to Roger (2002), “diffusion is the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system. It is a special type of communication, in which the messages are about a new idea”. Thus, in the context of citizens with disabilities, communication channels should be equally accessible, in particular those based on innovative media such as E-services. This chapter proposes an initiative for the diffusion of E-government, using accessible media for people with disabilities.