The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working together in the development of standards for the World Wide Web. As of 5 March 2023, W3C had 462 members. W3C also engages in education and outreach, develops software and serves as an open forum for discussion about the Web.
The digital divide is the unequal access to digital technology, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and the internet. The digital divide creates a division and inequality around access to information and resources. In the Information Age in which information and communication technologies (ICTs) have eclipsed manufacturing technologies as the basis for world economies and social connectivity, people without access to the Internet and other ICTs are at a socio-economic disadvantage, for they are unable or less able to find and apply for jobs, shop and sell online, participate democratically, or research and learn.
An open standard is a standard that is openly accessible and usable by anyone. It is also a common prerequisite that open standards use an open license that provides for extensibility. Typically, anybody can participate in their development due to their inherently open nature. There is no single definition, and interpretations vary with usage.
Washington State University is a public land-grant research university with its flagship, and oldest, campus in Pullman, Washington. Founded in 1890, WSU is also one of the oldest land-grant universities in the American West. With an undergraduate enrollment of 24,278 and a total enrollment of 28,581, it is the second largest institution for higher education in Washington state behind the University of Washington. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity".
The global digital divide describes global disparities, primarily between developed and developing countries, in regards to access to computing and information resources such as the Internet and the opportunities derived from such access. As with a smaller unit of analysis, this gap describes an inequality that exists, referencing a global scale.
Community informatics (CI) is an interdisciplinary field that is concerned with using information and communication technology (ICT) to empower members of communities and support their social, cultural, and economic development. Community informatics may contribute to enhancing democracy, supporting the development of social capital, and building well connected communities; moreover, it is probable that such similar actions may let people experience new positive social change. In community informatics, there are several considerations which are the social context, shared values, distinct processes that are taken by members in a community, and social and technical systems. It is formally located as an academic discipline within a variety of academic faculties including information science, information systems, computer science, planning, development studies, and library science among others and draws on insights on community development from a range of backgrounds and disciplines. It is an interdisciplinary approach interested in using ICTs for different forms of community action, as distinct from pure academic study about ICT effects.
A telecentre is a public place where people can access computers, the Internet, and other digital technologies that enable them to gather information, create, learn, and communicate with others while they develop essential digital skills. Telecentres exist in almost every country, although they sometimes go by a different names including public internet access center (PIAP), village knowledge center, infocenter, Telecottage, Electronic Village Hall, community technology center (CTC), community multimedia center (CMC), multipurpose community telecentre (MCT), Common/Citizen Service Centre (CSC) and school-based telecentre. While each telecentre is different, their common focus is on the use of digital technologies to support community, economic, educational, and social development—reducing isolation, bridging the digital divide, promoting health issues, creating economic opportunities, and reaching out to youth for example.
Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET) also known as Women of Uganda Network Development Limited is Ugandan non-governmental organization that aids women and women's organisations in the use and access of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to share information and address issues their concerns such as gender norms, advocating for their rights and building communities and businesses through education.
BytesForAll is a South Asian initiative to focus on how information technology and the internet can help in taking up social development issues. It is one of the oldest ICT4D networks in South Asia. It was launched at a time when ICT4D was yet to become a buzz-word on the development circuit, and was still largely unnoticed for its potential.
Participatory Web 2.0 for development was a term coined around 2007-2008 to describe new ways of employing legemvweb services, in order to improve information sharing and collaborative production of content in the context of development work. Emerging developments in participatory Web and user-generated content platforms were seen to create conditions by which actors in development could easily relate to other stakeholders, have selective access to information, produce and publish their own content and redistribute pieces of content released by others. At this time, new social tools, such as wikis, blogs, and other user-generated content platforms, were first being considered for their ability to help development actors integrate, combine, aggregate, generate, moderate and mediate content. In a typical Web2forDev scenario data and/or functionalities from a number of free/low cost online applications are combined and served as mashups thus ensuring a wide range of online services at low cost. The term is no longer used in the development informatics or ICT4D fields.
Merit Network, Inc., is a nonprofit member-governed organization providing high-performance computer networking and related services to educational, government, health care, and nonprofit organizations, primarily in Michigan. Created in 1966, Merit operates the longest running regional computer network in the United States.
Knowbility is an American non-governmental organization based in Austin, Texas, working to support the independence and empowerment of people with disabilities by promoting the use and improving the availability of accessible information technology. Its mission is to create an inclusive digital world for people of all abilities. Knowbility's signature program is the Accessibility Internet Rally, a web-building competition that brings together volunteer web designers to create accessible websites for nonprofit organizations and artists that serve communities all over the world.
Kantara Initiative, Inc. is a non-profit trade association that works to develop standards for identity and personal data management. It focuses on improving the trustworthy use of identity and personal data in the area of digital identity management and data privacy.
The digital divide in the United States refers to inequalities between individuals, households, and other groups of different demographic and socioeconomic levels in access to information and communication technologies ("ICTs") and in the knowledge and skills needed to effectively use the information gained from connecting.
The digital divide is described as the characterization of the gap between individuals or countries that have access to technology and individuals or countries that do not. This also includes, but is not limited to: access to computers, internet, and information literacy. General contributions to the digital divide are geography and next generational users. Next generational users are more involved with using devices that can connect to the internet, while the geography factor focuses more on how an individual's location put them at an advantage or disadvantage to compete with the digital age. However, only a handful on people and communities are being represented. Underdeveloped geographical locations, like certain regions of the continent of Africa serves as one of the underrepresented minorities. In particular, South Africa faces many developmental problems that make it one of the more complex societies in the world to map the digital divide in. The country is divided by ethnic inequality and discrepancies in the level of development between different sectors. These obstacles result in disparities in access to information and communications technology (ICT). This disparity is commonly known as the digital divide. There has been another major contributor, namely, Telkom and its monopolistic hold on the progress of ICT in South Africa. South Africa faces unique challenges in addressing the digital divide, including ethnic inequality, disparities in development levels between different sectors, and a historically monopolistic telecommunications industry. Efforts to bridge the digital divide in South Africa involve a combination of government initiatives, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), non-profit organizations (NPOs), and public-private partnerships, all working towards increasing access to technology, promoting digital literacy, and enhancing digital skills among the population.
Mobiles for development (M4D), a more specific iteration of Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D), refers to the use of mobile technologies in global development strategies. Focusing on the fields of international and socioeconomic development and human rights, M4D relies on the theory that increased access to mobile devices acts as an integral cornerstone in the promotion of overall societal development.
Educational technology in sub-Saharan Africa refers to the promotion, development and use of information and communication technologies (ICT), m-learning, media, and other technological tools to improve aspects of education in sub-Saharan Africa. Since the 1960s, various information and communication technologies have aroused strong interest in sub-Saharan Africa as a way of increasing access to education, and enhancing its quality and fairness.
The digital divide the Philippines refers to inequalities between individuals, households, and other groups of different demographic and socioeconomic levels in the Philippines in access to information and communication technologies ("ICTs") and in the knowledge and skills needed to effectively use the information gained from connecting.
The digital divide is an economic and social inequality with regard to access to, use of, or impact of information and communication technologies (ICT). Factors causing the divide can vary depending on the country and culture, as can the potential solutions for minimizing or closing the divide.