Citizens with disabilities are at once the most vulnerable during an emergency, and the most likely to have greater access challenges to communications media than the rest of the population. Consequently, finding technological solutions that ensure access is critical to an effective emergency communications and emergency management plan.
This Wireless RERC research brief examines the effects of age on use of various media to receive and share public alert Information by people with disabilities. The data presented in this paper were collected from our Emergency Communications Survey.
Two questions in the Emergency Communications Survey in particular shed light on patterns of technology use by people with disabilities during public disasters and emergencies across age cohorts. These questions are:
1. For the most recent instance when you received a public emergency alert, how were you alerted?
2. If you shared the alert information for the most public alert you received, how did you share it?
