Addressing Digital Exclusion in the North East
Date published:
In September of this year, IPPR North produced a report on Addressing Digital Exclusion in North East England. The comprehensive report includes guidance for employers for what they can do to help.
Digital exclusion has been an issue long before the Covid-19 pandemic, but since it began, reliance on access to digital services has increased since many people started to attend school and work from home. The boundaries between our virtual and daily lives are becoming increasingly blurred, and it even became difficult to meet your basic needs throughout the height of the pandemic lockdowns if you either did not have access to, or did not have the skills to navigate, the internet. The report states that digital exclusion is not just a matter of access, with a range of other complex challenges relating to digital literacy such as accessibility, confidence, and safety lying beneath. Digital exclusion therefore exists on a spectrum. The four overlapping barriers to digital inclusion that the report highlighted are:
- Lack of connectivity, either due to infrastructure provision or affordability
- Lack of access to devices
- Lack of skills and confidence, including life skills, work skills, and understanding online safety
- Lack of inclusive digital design which accounts for accessibility needs
Although it cannot be definitively said how many people in the North East are digitally excluded according to this definition, particularly because there is a lack of data available on digital exclusion at local and regional levels, there is evidence that the North East has higher levels of digital exclusion than the rest of England, particularly in rural areas.
Digital inequalities are closely associated with other dimensions of inequality and can exacerbate these further. For instance, the key groups affected by digital exclusion include disabled people (who are often affected due to poor service design such as lack of screen reader compatibility or access to specific software or hardware) and asylum seekers (who are often locked out of language support or digital skills programmes due to insecure immigration status and receive insufficient financial support to access devices or a secure connection). These already disadvantaged groups’ digital exclusion is then a ‘gateway’ to further inequalities such as an inability to access certain services, opportunities, benefits, or difficulty engaging in social, political and economic life. This makes the need for long-term public policy solutions all the more pressing, especially when many of the shifts to digital brought on by the pandemic appear here to stay, while some of the support offered to digitally excluded people throughout the pandemic has already started to be withdrawn.
The report set out many recommendations for public policy solutions, including the right to access to a minimum 10Mbit/s connection at home regardless of income, the right to essential digital skills, and the right to affordable access to devices such as through loan-schemes or access through libraries and other public sector facilities. Also, because digital exclusion is deeply intertwined with other inequalities and deprivation, specific support should be given to these groups to target the specific forms of exclusion they face.
The report also outlined guidance for businesses, including:
- Due to their deep understanding of local communities and their strong connections, organisations in the voluntary sector should work with public and private organisations with the aim to be the primary deliverers for digital inclusion initiatives. Local enterprises should seek to work with these social enterprises in order to promote digital inclusion initiatives within the private sector.
- All public service providers should ensure that digital isn’t the only option – offer a suitable offline alternative for anyone who is unable to access digital services for any reason.
- Website designers should implement inclusive service design and address language barriers on websites.
- All employers should support their employees with digital skills development regardless of their role. Ensuring that all employees meet a basic level of digital skills will not only prepare them for the future, but also for their non-working life.
Read the full report by IPPR North here.
If you are interested in upskilling your employees with digital skills, Northumbria University is holding an informative webinar tomorrow, on Friday 10th December, 10am–11am in which you can find out more about their Skills Programmes with the Institute of Coding in software development and data science. Businesses have been offered a 70% subsidy, while individuals who mee the eligibility criteria can also take part in these for free. There are also free digital skills courses for all levels designed by Accenture over at Future Learn, and basic courses on Learn My Way, Make It Click, Microsoft, and Lloyds.
Freya Thompson
Knowledge and Research Executive
Photo by Kaitlyn Baker on Unsplash