A radically inclusive approach to digital society
red and blue light bokeh, by Compare Fibre on Unsplash
Today we're publishing a new paper, "Affordable, Accessible, and Easy-to-Use: A radically inclusive approach to building a better digital society". This report stems from research we have been conducting exploring the relationship between digital inclusion and health. This research has been part of our Community Connectivity programme and our 3-year partnership with Impact on Urban Health.
Over the last two decades, social, economic, and technological norms have drastically changed how people in the UK are expected to gain access to the building blocks of a good life. Digital technologies have become so fused with goods, services, and everyday essentials that digital inclusion is increasingly understood as a super social determinant of health — "super" because of the immense way it simultaneously impacts and is impacted by each of the social determinants of health. To take advantage of the benefits offered by digital technologies and build a better digital society, the UK must shift to a "digitally inclusive by design" approach.
"Affordable, Accessible, and Easy-to-Use" sets out the ways digital inclusion has a bearing on almost every part of life, and introduces our Social Model of Digital Inclusion, a framework that considers health and wellbeing not just for individual people but for local communities, and the population as a whole.
By 2030, digital inclusion should be affordable, accessible, and easy-to-use for all adults and households across the UK. This can be achieved by:
Removing economic barriers to inclusion through legislation that ensures good quality, secure devices and connectivity are affordable and the Minimum Digital Living Standards are accessible to all
Developing and enforcing an Inclusive Service Standard that:
ensures essential services across the public and private sector are still accessible for those who are digitally excluded, providing offline alternatives where needed
ensures essential digital services across the public and private sector are easy-to-use for those with low digital skills and low-levels of digital confidence.
Through this research, we aim to contribute to ongoing conversations and debates about digital inclusion and health. Our analysis builds on existing health justice, disability justice, and digital justice frameworks and applies a power analysis to shift responsibility for digital inclusion from the personal to the social. As such, our finding is that, to solve digital exclusion, organisations, businesses, and governments must become digitally inclusive by design. This will improve individual and collective health and wellbeing, increase social inclusion across communities, and raise productivity across the UK.
Credits:
Written by Dominique Barron
Edited by Anna Dent
Cover photo by Compare Fibre on Unsplash