Except for the hearing and speech disabled, voice telephony is a relatively simply technology to use. The Internet is different. We’ve been thinking for some time about how we can improve our understanding of persons with the skills needed to make good use of the potential of the Internet. It’s in this context that I read the summary results of the 2011-12 Sri Lanka Census:
Literate population : Final census data indicates that out of the population aged 10 years or more at the time of Census, 16,142,267 (95.7%) of Sri Lankans are literate. In the same age group, number of literate people in urban sector is 3,059,241 (97.7%) while the corresponding figure for rural and estate sectors are 12,446,443 (95.7%) and 616,583 (86.1%) respectively. The literacy rate among males is 96.8 percent(7,841,287) while the corresponding value for females is 94.6 percent(8,300,980). (Tables A31)
Ability to use computer : On an average 24.2 percent (4,086,167) of 10 years or more aged population reported that they have ability to use computers. The corresponding figures for males and females are reported as 26.5(2,143,901) and 22.1(1,942,266) percent respectively. The percentage of young people showed higher percentage of using computers than people in the old age groups. For example ability to use computer among 15-19 age group is 47.2
percent(388,971) whereas the corresponding figure for people aged 60-64 years is 4.1 percent(20,065). (Tables A36)Language ability: Final data of Census 2012 revealed that 14,670,239 (87.0%) of people can speak Sinhala while 4,807,584 (28.5%) can speak Tamil and 4,019,583 (23.8%) can speak English. Proportion of the population who can read and write Sinhala is 79.7 (13,439,904) while the corresponding figure for Tamil language and English language is 26.4 (4,456,056) and 30.8 percent(5,194,996) respectively. (Tables A32)
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