Exploring Digital Exclusion
As our lives move online and organisations shift to a digital-first approach, people’s ability to make use of technology is essential. Essential for organisations, where the 11.8 million people in the U.K. lacking the digital skills essential for work impact both business and economic growth.
Important for vulnerable people and marginalised communities too, where 10 million people lack the basic digital skills needed to access the products and services that are essential to managing their lives, inhibiting their personal potential and connection to their local communities in its wake.
Yet, when we think about digital exclusion, the issue often gets reduced down to who has access to the internet, can get their hands on a laptop and what software or apps people can (or will) make use of.
At our Responsible Tech Review on Digital Exclusion, a panel of pioneers spanning Barclays, Manchester City Council and the Ada Lovelace Institute explored the bigger picture of digital inclusion, and where tech organisations can focus their efforts to ensure both society and industry can thrive.
Tech is just the tool we use. We utilise so many different tools in our lives, and digital is just one of those ways. It’s ubiquity, however, means we have a huge opportunity to do things differently.
Liz Hardwick @ DigiEnable
The first step in rethinking digital exclusion is to challenge how we think of technology. So often, the products and services we create are done from the context of what industries and institutions want people to do.
To access their benefits, people have to go online to be able to live IRL. To manage money, the banks prefer us to be mobile-first, as having readily accessible money means readily accessible spending. To share our lives through social media and enable human connection, so we can be targeted with tailored advertisements and sold products and services we might not really want or need.
When it comes to consumers and users, rarely do we question whether tech should be used at all. In the name of efficiency and cost-effectiveness, we often forget that technology is here to serve humans and not the organisations wielding it. That ego leads to making assumptions about people’s wants and needs, because it’s of secondary importance, and it’s forcing people to behave in certain ways that benefit us and not them, that the root causes of digital exclusion are found.
Jumping into providing laptops and dongles, expecting people to develop the skills and confidence needed to effectively use apps and websites, and having done so, show up and use the products and services we want them to hit our engagement targets or boost our bottom line. What’s needed most to address digital exclusion is listening.
Being digitally connected is not just about using a digital tool to accomplish a goal. It affects our relationships and is fully embedded in our social lives. The big issue in our approach to technology is its seeming neutrality and objectivity.
Kira Allmann @ Ada Lovelace Institute
The second step, therefore, is to shift our perspectives by centring the people using the products and services we create. Starting with those furthest removed from the technology intended, we create better products and services when we listen to their needs, understand the full context of their lives (beyond just the parts of it we want our products to interact with), and recognise the wider impact digital has on people’s time, relationships and work.
Imagine the difference that could have been made had the banks considered how removing high street branches in favour of mobile banking would impact elderly people’s connection with local communities. While Lloyds and Natwest are now investing in digital skills for older generations and remote communities through high street hubs, imagine the approach and innovation that might have emerged had those impacted been engaged upfront.
Qualitative engagement, peer-led conversations and participatory design are therefore essential. Understanding what’s important to people and the opportunities that emerge as a result mean data and digital have the potential to be so much more useful and interesting. It’s when people are motivated to meet a need, and are able to meet it, that organisations win too.
So, once organisations have moved beyond seeing tech as a goal in and of itself, and ensured it addresses what’s important to the people it’s here to serve, that’s when skills and the confidence to use them come in. Yet, the training programmes and community initiatives aimed at getting people online are only half of the picture.
We’ve created systems that define society, but the people behind them don’t look like most people. This create a couple of problems, one in the the way we embrace digital skills, but we also need to look at who is creating these resources and how we’re creating these resources. Digital exclusion is also about diversity.
Sherelle Fairweather @ Manchester City Council
The third step to truly being inclusive is to consider the unique challenges people might face too. Vulnerable people and marginalised groups don’t experience the world the same way as white, heterosexual, cisgender and able-bodied men, so consent, accessibility and trauma-informed design are all essential tools in ensuring digital is truly inclusive.
Fundamentally, it comes down to good design. People experiencing homelessness, for example, often only have access to a library computer for one hour at a time, and asking for addresses in official documentation can be triggering to those who are struggling to find security and stability.
Yet, most work and skills programmes and employment initiatives request a permanent address, even if the information isn’t necessary, so how might design and development help people better make use of their time online and avoid unnecessary and painful interactions?
A lot of what’s designed and developed, however, comes down to who is briefing or commissioning work, or who is involved in the design and development of digital platforms or data infrastructure. The lack of diversity, whether from a client or delivery team’s perspective, has a considerable influence on what’s prioritised.
It’s not like people make a conscious decision to exclude, but there’s a single mindedness on designing for the common majority — focusing on the end product and bringing unconscious bias about who that user is. If we don’t do co-creation, that’s where we get this wrong.
Darren Earnshaw @ Barclays
With tight budgets, delivery timeframes or political windows in which to play, there is little space and inclination to ask bigger questions and better solutions. Wedded to rapidly developing and deploying technology, the processes, practices and policies we live by are an integral part of the problem too, forcing us to make assumptions about what will appeal to the common majority.
It’s when diversity is absent that going above and beyond in engaging people and communities becomes essential. More than just consultation or user research and testing, co-producing technology is where the potential for exceptional digital inclusion lies and requires more time and space for storytelling and contextual thinking in our practises, processes and policies to enable it.
Effecting such change is difficult, especially when outcome-driven approaches are embedded in every team and level of the organisations we work in. But, by including people upfront, we can save ourselves the costs of unpicking the terrible experiences we create and the reputation costs of the backlash that can come with it.
Backlashes like the one experienced by UCAS when black students were more likely to be subjected to application interrogations than young white people on account of data bias in the system back in 2018. What if we were to think long term and holistically about our products and the impact they have on people’s lives? We could create technology that people really want and need and will continue to use for a long-time.
Do a big survey, or a biggest questionnaire — what is it that bugs you? What do you want to change? Unless we have the conversations and get people having their say, we’re making assumptions. The stories are important.
We need to get hold of these questions about why people can’t or won’t engage. Once you start embedding something in an application, you can create some relevance. The moment somebody can see it working for them, that’s in my world, it’s inclusive. The use of stories makes sure we’re creating something relevant.
Linda P @ Noisy Cricket
Digital inclusion comes when we put people first, internal and external to our organisations. It’s about helping our employees and our communities determine what good looks like, not us, and create it so that they can thrive. In its wake, our organisations can too.
