Digital Network - Age and Disability
11 March 2009
On Friday, March 6th, I attended the Inclusive Digital Economy Network Event. The network comprises of a large group of researchers working to identify and address the challenges of older and disabled people within the Digital Economy.
It is clear there is a lot of very good research being undertaken in the UK on older people and people with disabilities. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) gave a presentation on it plans for their £120m research fund (out of an annual budget of £740m) to look at the digital economy and next-generation healthcare. One take-away from the day is we need to find a way to ensure that all the research carried out by these organisations is utilised by policy makers.
The keynote speech was delivered by Wayne David MP, Deputy Minister for Digital Inclusion, who talked about the Governments Digital Inclusion Action Plan and its priorities. The plan can be found here: http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/communities/deliveringdigitalinclusion
The Minister also talked about the importance of assistive living and usability of equipment. He pointed out that 11.3 million people in the UK are of pensionable age and this number is only going to rise. Yet people's needs and wants are not being thought about by designers and manufacturers. Some stark research findings from the day revealed that for people offered assistive technology - 56% quickly abandon it; 15% never use it and overall 90% of assistive technology is discarded within two years. Clearly some scope for greater used involvement in design!
But there are other issues that need to be addressed to help people engage with technology. One example is people's learning strategies. An excellent presentation by Professor Andrew Monk from the University of York revealed that depending on which cohort you belong to impacts on how you learn about new products or services - if pre 1985 when Windows and Apple were launched you are likely to learn by rote or using the instruction manual, post 1985 you are likely to learn by exploration and experimentation - this fact has implications on how services and technologies should be designed for the mainstream.
We watched a short film, Relatively PC, where two actors played Jack and Maureen, who are older consumers trying to grapple with modern technology. After watching the film we ‘met' Jack and Maureen as part of a Q&A session on their experiences. They had really worked on their character profile and were able to bring the barriers and enablers to new technology to life in a fun, imaginative, and light-hearted way.
Overall, whilst much of the research centred on usability and assistive technology the issues they touched on have much wider implications and ones the Panel is working to help resolve; just some of these are: take-up of the internet; media literacy; and consumer empowerment.