Tech gauntlet
I'm not a technical person. The circles I run in are. My wife works in tech, a lot of her/my friends are developers, programmers. I frequent the indieweb with all its 'roll your own' ethos. Its git and npm and bash that give me full-body chills. I'm really not a technical person.
But there are people who, when filling their email address in on a form, will backspace through, deleting letter by letter, because they forgot to capitalise it. Starting again from the beginning. There are people who don't remember their email address, much less their password, who have it set up on one old phone because they couldn't get it on their newer one, who check it once a week or less. There are people - many people - who don't have an email address at all.
One solution is training, classes. If people want to be online there should be support for them being online. Absolutely. Digital exclusion is a thing and it needs to be fixed. Accessibility needs fixing. These are all very important things!
Alongside this is another solution - to make a world that doesn't break if someone chooses not to, or simply cannot, adopt a particular technology. It doesn't matter how great we think it is or how helpful we think it might be. Even with all the a11y work in the world the internet is hard work for people with visual impairments, Parkinsons, motor disabilities, cognitive or literacy barriers, language barriers. The internet is full of scams, viruses, screaming popups, misinformation, tracking, dark patterns. Security features like 2FA are just more complications even when they are built to make things better.
Why are we forcing nonagenarians through this gauntlet? Leave them be. Let people phone their council. Let them talk to someone in their local branch. Let them get paper forms.
#notallnonagenarians, obviously. An equal retort would be, Don't automatically assume older people don't use or understand tech or the internet. Tim Berners-Lee is seventy-one. It's the people who are now older who invented the internet.
Plus lots of younger people are digitally excluded, often as a result of health problems, learning difficulties, disabilities, literacy and language barriers, poverty. If someone struggles to read the internet with its walls of text is a hellscape to be avoided.
With the backlash against smart devices we agree that my mug, toothbrush, or book shouldn't have to wait for a software update. That I should be able to switch on my lights even if the wifi is slow. This is the same thing. I don't use social media, I choose not to. Which already makes life a bit difficult. Should I lose access to my banking, too? Not be able to contact my utilities providers, my local council? I don't have a microwave or an air fryer, but there's still food in the shops for me.
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