w/r/t to the digital divide, I absolutely don't think it's a reason to wait for open access. Open access reduces inequality of access, even with the digital divide, because Internet access is far less differential than subscriptions to academic journals. Also, as Ken notes, it's more likely that someone without Internet access will know someone who has access, than that someone without a journal subscription will know someone who has a subscription. In other words, it's easier to find someone who will print you a copy, or put it on a disk, if necessary.
My mention of the digital divide was meant to suggest that OA advocates not make the mistake of conflating OA with other issues. I'll crib from Peter Suber's “Open Access Overview 1 “:
Open access is not synonymous with universal access. Even after OA has been achieved, at leastfour kinds of access barrier might remain in place: Filtering and censorship barriers . . . Languagebarriers . . . Handicap access barriers . . . Connectivity barriers
(I've suggested another, specialization barriers, which limits not access per se but comprehension.)
Open access is separate from those other problems. It doesn't solve them; it doesn't seek to, at least not directly. Indirectly, open access facilitates work-arounds for the other problems, as we've been discussing: e.g., lowering permission barriers lowers the cost of translation (to overcome language barriers). So, OA doesn't help much (though it does help a little), but it doesn't hurt, either.
There may be good reasons to work on the digital divide rather than on open access (e.g. you find it a more interesting problem, you find it a more important problem), just as there might be good reasons to work on any other issue (raising one's children well, stopping the genocide in Darfur, cleaning trash from a local waterway). But I don't know of a good reason not to work on open access, or to delay working on open access.
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