Inequalities in Technology- Language Barriers

Language has always been a barrier between people connecting and interchanging ideas and thoughts. Many feel that the advent of technology has helped in bridging the divide between languages, but I feel that the fact that not everyone has these technologies as assumed(cell phones, everyday internet access), it can serve as an inequality. For example in libraries, as stated in the BETTER TOGETHER piece by Putnam & Feldstein, Books are available in different languages and ESL classes are also available....The following are taken from that piece:

"The Humboldt Park Branch, in an area with a large Latino population, maintains an extensive collection of Spanish-language books, magazines, and newspapers." "Its absence of barriers to members, its determination to welcome everyone, proves the point. So the library frequently functions as a point of entry into the society for
new immigrants, a safe and easy first step to participation in community and public life. "I learn English here," a middle-aged Vietnamese man says, pointing to a sign on the wall for ESL classes"

It serves as inequality if you were someone who was latino, but wasn't able to live in the latin community, therefore making your library the one without all these spanish-language books, etc. Also if you lived too far from the library you couldn't access these these ESL classes, while someone in the community, close to the library could...thus an inequality.

This is directly applied to technology. For example with cell phones, there are multiple services which allow you to directly translate outgoing and incoming text messages to a number of different languages(http://www.prlog.org/10084106-sms-text-translation-and-live-interpreters-arrives-on-your-cell-phone-with-mobilelingtasticcom.html) This drops the language barrier, but what about for those who financially can't afford a cell phone, geographically doesn't get service. This creates an inequality. The second example is with the internet....The internet has news websites that allow you to read the news in hundreds of different languages, there are translating services like www.altavista.babelfish.com., etc.(we probably all remember using these while taking high-school language classes...i know I was a frequenter of it). People who don't have access to wireless or the internet regularly are at a disadvantage to those who do. This is where free internet access, displayed at some libraries comes into play.

Language Barriers can be lowered with the advent of new technology, however...since the basic assumption that everyone has a cell phone and the internet is not true(according to census.gov, mississipi had a low of 38.9% of its resident having internet access http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2007/information_communications/internet_access_and_usage.html).....this inequality in language is HUGE!!!!