Accessibility implications of teleactivities: A literature review

Over the past five years, the Covid-19 pandemic has highly boosted the adoption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), and especially of teleactivities (e.g. teleworking, teleshopping, telemedicine). This shift has raised new questions around the implications of teleactivities, including their effects on transport and mobility. Among these, the accessibility impacts of teleactivities may be very relevant. However, they are still limitedly explored in scientific research, both methodologically and empirically. As such, our study aims to review the literature on the accessibility implications of teleactivities, with the purpose of pointing out gaps and suggesting research directions. To this end, we select 61 studies by following the PRISMA approach, and we review them through five thematic keys covering complementary aspects of the accessibility analysis in the context of teleactivities. Based on our review, we provide two outputs: (1) a conceptual scheme based on our thematic keys pointing out research gaps in the study of the accessibility implications of teleactivities; and (2) a selection of potential research directions inspired from the identified research gaps. The latter include e.g. the role of teleactivities in the land-use transport feedback cycle, the potential usage of activity-based accessibility models to estimate teleactivities’ implications, or the analysis of the impacts that a teleactivity (e.g. telework or teleshopping) may have on accessibility to other in-presence activities (e.g. leisure or healthcare). We believe this review may represent a useful interpretation of the existing literature; and that readers may profit from it to define new research questions and directions.