## 5 Findings and Discussion
### Incompatible Assistive ICT  
Sometimes the assistive ICT works just fine, and the ICT works just fine, but put together they are not compatible, at least not for the purposes the user wants. [PERSON] is a 17-year-old girl with a keen interest in computers who spends most of her leisure time at her computer. [PERSON] is blind and has been allocated a computer with a Braille display, a screen reader, and a speech program. Thanks to these assistive ICT devices, the computer and the Web are accessible to her. When I ask [PERSON] if she ever has trouble operating the computer, she offers the following reply:  
\"Well, not everything is accessible with screen readers. There is this website by an artist I like a lot, but it is not accessible with Braille display. There are really a lot of websites that are not accessible with Braille display, like YouTube and stuff. At school my friends ask me: 'Have you watched the fun new video on YouTube?' And I go like: 'What? How can you watch it?' Then they tell me the Web address, but: Oh, no it does not work with the software application for my Braille display. The worst thing is that they might think it is me that knows nothing about computers.\"  
In order to participate in her friends' discussions about cool videos on the Web, [PERSON] needs to know these videos. Somehow she must be enabled to see, experience, or sense what these videos are all about. A number of actors must be mobilized and have to connect in complex networks in order to give [PERSON] the opportunity to experience these videos. In addition to the usual network of connections that is needed in order to log onto the Web, this network also has to be compatible with [PERSON]'s various assistive ICTs. These assistive technologies have been assigned to make her computer and the Web accessible to her. However, when [PERSON] tries to log on to YouTube, she finds that her assistive ICTs do not work as intended. The question is then whether the assistive technology is inadequate or the adaptive interface is incompatible with her screen reader. Is it possible to provide digital accessibility, in every respect, for everyone at the same time? Moreover, who would be responsible to ensure universal design and equal accessibility in a global setting, such as the Internet, holding both public and private parties? This limitation in accessibility results in the exclusion of many visually impaired young people from participation in their peers' joint experience with YouTube and other websites containing graphical content, and, thus, from meaningful participation in vital parts of their peers' social interactions. In these interactions, young visually impaired people are placed outside their peer group's fellowship, identified as deviant, and given an ascribed social identity as disabled. Thus, due to incompatible technology, young people with visual impairments are excluded from many popular websites, leading to a digital divide in the peer group. What occurs in this particular situation when [PERSON] tries to access YouTube is a break in the network's many connections, an error that blocks [PERSON]'s ability to present her individual chosen identity as a computer-skilled young person. [PERSON] describes the blocked connections as inaccessible websites. These inaccessible websites are obstacles to [PERSON]'s opportunity to present her chosen self-identity, and they lead to digital differentiations in her peer group. In the current study, the blind and the partially sighted participants describe numerous encounters with inaccessible ICT and unusable assistive ICT. Unusable assistive ICT does not mean that the assistive ICT cannot be used; it means that the technology cannot be used for the purposes these young people want to use them for. Such purposes are digital interactions with friends, most often on websites containing graphics. This case illuminates the intertwined and mutually permeable nature of the virtual and local arenas, and it shows how obstacles in one arena also affect the other.