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Pew Internet: Health content needs to be accessible on mobile devices

Pew Internet has posted the above presentation, given by Susannah Fox to the National Library of Medicine on July 8. Her message was startlingly clear: If your health content is not accessible on mobile devices, it is not available to some groups.

And, according to her thoughtful commentary (which was posted today), it's not available to a startlingly large group:

Fully 84% of 18-29 year-olds now go online wirelessly, compared with 69% of 30-49 year-olds, 49% of 50-64 year-olds, and 20% of adults age 65 and older.

I'm particularly struck by this stat: Twenty percent of wireless internet users go online exclusively on a cell phone.

That point draws on a Pew report on mobile access from last week. All of which prompts Fox to characterize this shift as being:

. . like watching the effects of erosion on a coastline: The information landscape is shifting and the changes are picking up speed. . . Now is the time to make changes to online services to account for both the popularity of mobile access and the way it is changing us as internet users.

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