ICT and disabled and elderly people in different cultures

The current study discovers how disabled people and elderly people use Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in different cultures and how they thought about it. Earlier literature lists several studies about ICT, disabled and elderly people, and little information about two countries Vietnam and Finland. The ICT usage of disabled and elderly people in these two countries may be different. Therefore, the current study offers significant findings how elderly people use ICT. The research approach was qualitative method. Twenty elderly respondents (ten Finnish and ten Vietnamese) were interviewed, and after that, the empirical material was analyzed. The findings also revealed that the earlier knowledge from previous studies were still valid. For example, the older people used less ICT than their younger counterparts, and they also had more problems while using it. In addition, the findings also presented the benefits of ICT to elderly people. The interviews highlighted what elderly people thought about ICT and what they wanted to have in the future. The reason might be that they wanted to have a better life in the future. The cultural differences between two countries were also given in the findings. The Vietnamese respondents were afraid of recording during the interviews while some Finnish people did allow recording. The technological gaps are quite large. In Vietnam, the elderly people had less access to ICT, so their usage was limited in comparison with the Finnish respondents. However, the Finnish elderly were more dependent on technology, because they used ICT quite often as additional aids in their everyday life. Moreover, from the findings, the designers and manufacturers of ICT can create suitable devices and services for elderly.