September 12th is End Digital Poverty Day, set up by the Digital Poverty Alliance to raise awareness and help gather support to tackily this issue.
In developing Virtual Memory Box digital poverty was one of the issues we were very aware of and came to understand and learn a lot more about. The issues can be lack of access to devices and/ or lack of knowledge about how to use them.
Some lessons we learned and tips we can share include:
🤗 If you are building any digital solution involve users from the start; Virtual Memory Box was co-created with young people and their carers, and we continue to involve them to develop and improve what we do.
🤔 Look beyond your assumptions, do the research – maybe your target audience do have mobile phones but they may well be very old models, not everyone has access to a computer at home, maybe devices are shared or passed on.
🖥️ Shared access – make sure your users are aware and know how to safely use any computers they use in a public place like libraries or colleges, eg: make sure you log out of all programmes; don’t save your passwords; delete your history and temporary files; use email not SMS for 2FA (two factor authentication).
🙌 Give support and build confidence where ever you can, it’s easy to assume that most people can use email, or search the internet but that is far from being true. Start at the beginning, what is email, what is the internet, how do you set it up and use it safely, and build up confidence.
👏 Encourage users to learn more – there are some great quality free training sessions and courses available, for example on the iDEA website.
Digital exclusion impacts poverty, with any new digital or tech development, some people can be left behind. With more awareness and action, we can all help tackle the digital divide.