The importance of inclusion

Attending a workshop about digital inclusion brought me to a concerning conclusion

Like most people, I like to think of myself and my organisation as being pretty open and inclusive. However, being thinking you are inclusive and actually being inclusive are two separate things.

Digital inclusion cover a wide range of issues, from issue usually associated with inclusion such as the use of subtitles and sign language on videos, to considering people who do not have home internet access.

Rather naively I had thought that having products available on mobile phones covered most our digital inclusivity issues, as it meant that people without a laptop or home computer could still access our products.

However, I was left with no answer as to what to do with someone who could not access the internet. And on top of that another uncomfortable realisation, that those people are invisible to us in practical terms. People who cannot access the internet, do not show up on our analytics. So we have no way of knowing the scale of the problem. This makes it even more important for us to cater to them, to ensure that they are not left out.

This could take on several forms. Perhaps allowing our content to be downloaded, so that people take the resource at school or a library, but still retain access when they go home.

However, because we have not considered these issues before, we will have to fix it retrospectively, which is harder than having it at the core of the product from the beginning. We can’t fix that immediately, but will give me a lot of food for thought in the coming weeks.