The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations is the membership organisation for Scotland's charities, voluntary organisations and social enterprises. Charity registered in Scotland SC003558. Registered office Mansfield Traquair Centre, 15 Mansfield Place, Edinburgh EH3 6BB.
Understand the problem: What even is digital inclusion?
Sometimes when people ask me what I do for a living, my heart sinks.
That’s not because I don’t like what I do, or I don’t think it’s important, but because a common frustration those of us working in digital inclusion have shared is the lack of public understanding about what it means.
We’ve all been confronted with blank faces, a pause, the ‘that sounds… interesting!’. There’s lots of reasons for this. People can’t imagine a world where they are digitally disadvantaged. Some people see digital as a luxury, not an essential. Sometimes, we just don’t have a nifty way of explaining what digital inclusion is or why it’s so important.
That’s why Scotland’s Digital Inclusion Charter’s first pledge is all about Understanding. It says: “We commit to understanding digital exclusion and how it impacts the people we work with.”
Digital exclusion is a hidden inequality. Some 700,000 people in Scotland don’t have the skills they need to get online, and 620,000 Scots can’t afford to access the internet they need for daily life.
But even these are only numbers. They don’t explain the individual circumstances of people who are locked out from a world that we all take for granted.
They don’t explain the single mother in rural Dumfriesshire who can’t access the support and services she needs in her isolated community, because she can’t afford an internet connection.
They don’t describe the disabled person in Inverness who won’t be able to interview for their dream job because people with a disability are less likely to be online than those who don’t.
Nor do they speak for the refugee who arrived in Glasgow, alone, with no way to connect with the people he knows and loves that he was forced to leave behind; no way to acclimatise to his new surroundings and culture.
This is the real life impact of digital exclusion. While the rest of us can save upwards of £900 a year on goods and services, access the job market and improve our skills – many people can’t.
Many people can’t pass the time and access entertainment. They can’t find love, find homes, find what they need in an increasingly digitised world that locks them out because they can’t afford, don’t know how to, or just don’t want to use the internet.
And that’s why the understanding pledge is so important.
Understanding what digital exclusion is and means to people that we work with gives us a much better chance of bringing people on the journey with us. We believe that digital inclusion is everyone’s responsibility – and the first step to playing your role is understanding where it impacts and how.
We think of it as the first step because it should inform everything you do. Only once you have a solid grip of the problems and how they relate to you and the people you work with can you start designing and delivering solutions to help them.
Fulfilling the Understanding pledge is all about familiarising yourself with the issue. There’s lots of ways you can do this, like:
- Reading up on digital exclusion in your community and beyond
- Asking your staff and service users about their digital skills
- Developing a business case for embedding digital inclusion in what you do
- Signing Scotland’s Digital Inclusion Charter and demonstrating your commitment.
Think about your own organisation. How do you understand the needs of the people you work with in the context of the support they need? Are you having those conversations?
Understanding the issue means many different things.
Digital inclusion is complex and nuanced. It can be difficult to resource and deliver on. It can be a long-term investment and hard to maintain.
But it doesn’t have to be.
By understanding what your community needs, taking the time to immerse yourself in Scotland’s vibrant community of practice, and committing to caring about the cause – you’ve already taken a valuable and important first step. Doing this will help inform your approach, and mean that what you do decide to do will be all the more meaningful.
Find out more about Scotland's Digital Inclusion Charter and how SCVO can help with understanding the problem.
