There is wide agreement that information and communication technology (ICT) is a valuable tool for people with disability. Several research disciplines have focused on how people with disability can take advantage of the technology available for social, educational and personal purposes. Virtual worlds represent the latest addition to the technologies available, yet there is little research on how people with disability use and experience virtual worlds. A review of research conducted in different disciplines on the affordances and challenges of virtual worlds and ICT for people with disability is presented here. The main objective was to highlight areas that lack sufficient research in the field of virtual worlds for people with disability. Understanding how use of ICT influences people with disability is important to identify the possibilities and challenges virtual worlds offer to this group. Findings from this study indicate that there is little empirical research exploring the social aspects, work opportunities and personal value virtual worlds may offer people with disability. The research reviewed points to the importance of bringing research disciplines together to accelerate knowledge about the potential and promises of virtual worlds for people with disability.
Part 3: Exploring Affect and AffordanceInternational audienceAffordance has emerged as a core concept in information systems (IS) research during the last decade. This relational concept is applied to understand and theorize the relationship between the social and the technical. In the works of the concept originator James Gibson, the relation was mainly portrayed as an ever-existing fact between the natural environment and an animal. In contrast, IS research focuses on relationships in-the-making between artificial things and human beings. In the IS context, we have identified vagueness in temporal and relational ontology: when do affordances exist and between whom or what? In this paper, we delve into the temporal and relational questions that have been omitted in much of the IS literature. What kind of a relationship is an affordance and when does it occur? Based on our hermeneutic understanding, we identify four stances from the existing literature. We classify those stances as canonical affordance, designed affordance, potential affordance, and affordance as completed action. We further argue that each stance has its own assumptions, consequences, and thus strengths and weaknesses
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