Comparative disadvantage and special opportunities and the information technology revolution: general considerations and the examination of visual impairment as a case study

Abstract

It is generally assumed that the benefits of new communications technologies are universal and evenly distributed but this overlooks the concepts of comparative disadvantage and special opportunity. Dyslexic people, for example, were increasingly comparatively disadvantaged in increasingly text‐based societies and deaf people were comparatively disadvantaged as text gave way to an increasing use of audio information but the telephone presented a special opportunity for house‐bound people as did the electronic amplifier for people with weak voices. Poor people are almost always disadvantaged by new systems either because the initial equipment or the training to use it are rare and expensive, but both these costs generally fall as time passes, the market expands and the research and development costs fall out of the pricing. The Information Technology (IT) revolution, then, is not unique in its creation of serious, if temporary, comparative disadvantage as well as many special opportunities. In this paper I will use the example of visual impairment to analyse the impact of communications systems on an identifiable — but by no means identical — cluster before addressing the more general comparative disadvantage and special opportunities brought about by the IT revolution.