Today a few of us attended a ‘hack day’ spending time with people who work in digital in the private sector, to consider the challenge of social isolation in rural communities. There has been recent research issued by the Local Government Association about the opportunity that technology provides for this issue.
We generated some ideas and a prototype for a campaign during the hack. It was great to work with a different group of people in a different way, and something we want to do again.
Developing digital skills can be one way to help reduce isolation – 4 in 10 people say being online helps them feel less alone. We have been doing some work in Dorset with Citizens online to improve our offer and understanding of where to target resources to improve people’s digital skills. We have a network of 41 digital champions who can help the 150,000 people in Dorset who lack digital skills, of which half of those have never been on line.
If you come into contact with someone who currently don’t use technology to access services, and they could benefit / are interested in developing their digital skills, please share the details that can be found here and help get the message out that we can support this.
At the end of the day we ran our accessibility bar, experiencing what it feels like if you have sight issues or a physical disability like arthritis that affects your hand movement. This quickly brought home how challenging using our online services can be, even when they meet accessibility standards! There is definitely more we can do here, including communicating to the workforce some of the basic inbuilt features available to change the font, size and colour in applications to make it easier for people.
#digitaldorset #servicesweek
