As a recent study of the Rand Corporation shows, since 1989 gaps in access to computers and network services have increased significantly in the United States as a function of socioeconomics status variables such as income, education, race, age. If these new media were merely consumer goods, large and even increasing socioeconomics gaps might be acceptable. When viewed as means to participation in intellectual, social, political and economic life in an information society, lack of access is much more disturbing. We cannot accept that the promise of information and communication technologies will be converted into a source of inequality and restriction of civil and political rights. It is obvious that without literacy the right of access to information and services becomes an empty promise.
Mass literacy is a great challenge to public sector and industry.
Recently, for instance, the Chamber of Lords has passed a deliberation stating that some important sport events must be diffused by tv without any access restrictions or fees, and the European Parliament adopted the same attitude. In this perspective, electronic citizenship means a free or at low cost access to a certain amount of information. But a true access to the electronic space is also a condition for making concrete one of the more important changes of this age. In the new space all people can be at the same time information consumers and producers. 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on the right to search, obtain and diffuse information.