Personal Access
From the learner's perspective, factors that affect access to learning opportunities emerge from the following series of questions:

• What learning do I want to pursue?
• Is it available in my community, at a time and place that make it possible for me to participate?
• Is it available to me by distance education, in a format that makes it possible for me to use?
• Can I afford it?
• Do I have the time to do this? If there are competing demands of family or work, will be able to negotiate sufficient time?
• Are there other factors, such as my previous education, my first language or my ability, that affect my eligibility or ability to participate?
• Will the learning program meet my needs as a learner?

While learning technologies, old and new, can help with some personal access issues such as the need to study on a flexible schedule, they cannot help with others, such as limited finances or insufficient time to study. Lack of confidence or an unsupportive family are barriers to learning that need to be addressed with the help of human support, rather than new learning technologies.

In some situations, newer learning technologies can make personal access more complicated. For example, access to single telephone lines and reliable electrical power is not a given for a significant number of Canadian households. Access to computers cannot be assumed. In many locations, if computers are available in public facilities, they may not be equipped with communication technology or for Internet access.

Language is also a major consideration for computer communication as English is the dominant language of the Internet and of many communication systems. One report prepared for IHAC notes that text based messaging and other software do not readily accommodate languages other than English, and that material in aboriginal languages in particular cannot be readily exchanged over electronic networks since their scripts cannot be written in the digital code used by most computers and networks.¹⁴ Even Canada's official language, French, is not well supported on the Information Highway. The final report of IHAC comments that "the availability of French language materials, navigational tools and compatible standards for their distribution is very limited and must be encouraged."¹⁵