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A paper about people with intellectual disabilities was published in Ireland this week. It wanted to find out how many people with intellectual disabilities use the internet. In Ireland, more people with intellectual disabilities use the internet than 3 years ago. But only 1 in 10 people use the internet. The report also said that very few people with intellectual disabilities Can send text messages. |
The number of people with intellectual disabilities using the internet in Ireland has increased by three per cent in three years according to a study released this week.
Trinity College’s School of Nursing and Midwifery found that 10.5 per cent of people with intellectual disabilities living in Ireland now use the internet as opposed to only 7.3 per cent in 2011.
This figure however remains remarkably lower than that of the Irish population as a whole, which identifies 77 per cent as being users of the internet.
Further research carried out by the Intellectual Disability Supplement to the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA) also showed that as few as 12.6 per cent of people with intellectual disabilities in Ireland were able to turn on a computer.
The study also carried out research on the ownership and use of mobile phones by people with intellectual disabilities, concluding that just 23.8 per cent were owners, a figure that shows little change over the last three years.
In addition, fewer than one in twenty people with intellectual disabilities claimed that they were capable of sending a text message.
To see TILDA’s collaborative report in full, a PDF version is available here.
