The aim of this study is to examine associations among welfare technology use, autonomy, and subjective well-being for supporting mobility and digital information accessibility of people with visual impairments. For these, the significant factors of w...
The aim of this study is to examine associations among welfare technology use, autonomy, and subjective well-being for supporting mobility and digital information accessibility of people with visual impairments. For these, the significant factors of welfare technology usage have been divided into three-categories as personal internal(individual factor), personal external(interpersonal environment factor, social environment factor) and this study applied the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model in modification for examining of relationships to autonomy, subjective well-being.
The whole process of this research is approved by Institute Review Board (IRB) and, a pilot-test performed for two-people with visual impairments before it starts. Also, this research performed on online survey method. A scheme of online survey is as follow.
More of all, through the online community and SNS, the participants (people with visual impairments including blindness and low-vision, over 18 years old age) are collected and if they want to participate this study, they used TTS (Test to Speech) on their PC, smart phone etc. totally, people with visual impairments of 254 received to data set and only used 250 cases for analysis except for inappropriate cases (4 cases). The period of online survey was July 4 to August 31, 2022.
The major findings of this study are as follow.
First, the differences examined between general characteristics of people with visual impairments(gender, age, education level, marital status, employment, monthly income, religion, living arrangement, self-rated health) and welfare technology usage factors(performance expectancy, effort expectancy, friend/colleague influence, family assistance, facilitating condition, policy support, intention to use, use behavior) as well as autonomy, subjective well-being.
Second, the significant associations found among performance expectation, friend/colleague influence, policy support, facilitation condition and welfare technology intention to use in mobility part positively. Also, the significant associations among performance expectation, policy support, facilitation condition and welfare technology intention to use in digital information accessibility part positively. In addition, the moderation effects were identified among friend/colleague influence (gender: male), performance expectation (gender: female), facilitation condition (age: over 40s).
Third, the significant associations found among welfare technology use, autonomy, and subjective well-being positively. This result indicated that very close relationship between welfare technology use and well-being life also, it has expanded to practical meaning of welfare technology use for people with visual impairments.
Through these findings, the politic and practical suggestions are as follow.
First, the policies which relate to support of welfare technology use for people with visual impairments should be considered in individual, interpersonal environment and social environment factors. This is not only for understanding of welfare technology but also, to support customized welfare technology for people with visual impairments.
Second, the act of supporting tool for people with visual impairments should be revised. According to the acts of supporting tool for people with visual impairments, cane and magnification devices are still seen as supportive tool. However, the people with visual impairments have been living in the 4th industrial revolution. Thus, those acts should be changed to support mobility and digital literacy with diverse software (e.g., screen reader, web- reader, image interpretation, speech map guidance etc.)
Third, social worker for high technology should be trained for people with visual impairments. The welfare technology use has been very important part for equal life. So, facilities and public institute relate to social welfare should be concerned in welfare technology. For this, the experts in public area which provide service to people with visual impairments should more investigate and set practical views.
Fourth, co-operating system for supporting welfare technology of people with visual impairments should be concerned. For this, the living lab approach might help to the problems. The living lab is one of the problem-solving method revolutionary with user, social worker, expert, policy maker etc. Generally, the stakeholders struggle to find the way to help their problems. Thus, the living lab method can easily facilitate to use of welfare technology for people with visual impairments.