If you have to use crutches or push a wheelchair or buggy, you realise how numerous are the cambers, dips and trips in pavements. A little bit of subsidence and a lot of cheap pavement ‘make good’ repairs don’t help. And when you’re elderly with decreased balance and mobility, life gets tougher.
That’s in the physical world.
Today we live in an online world.
A world that is alien to many elderly. They’ve lost their manual dexterity, with fat and maybe arthritic fingers. Using smart phones, online apps or communicating with chatbots and agents is nigh-on impossible.
And what if your hearing’s poorer than before? Many service centres are offshore. An agent’s English may be superb, but often their accent is impenetrable or they speak too fast. And if modern online lingo is hard to understand, it’s made worse if you’ve poorer eye sight which compromises reading small fonts.
The Dalai Lama XIV proclaimed, “Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.” But that’s exactly what we are doing.
A case in point
John (not his real name) is in his late 80’s. Over the course of his life he has been an accomplished craftsman. He owned a small company in London selling jewellery, often commissioned, to models and visitors to Covent Garden. He is erudite, well-read, plays the piano and is interested in politics. As a pre-baby boomer he comes from a mechanical era, one of tools, knobs and buttons. It’s a world in which he was very proficient. But navigating the modern world inside a small touch screen is virtually impossible for him – especially without accompanying paper manuals.
For John, digital exclusion is a reality.
Recently John learnt that his monthly gas and electricity payment was to rise by £100. Shocked, anxious, worried and depressed are just some of the feelings he had. How would he afford this?
He mentioned his concern to a neighbour. After some investigation, a different energy supplier was recommended, one with customer service agents that actually answer the phone and are easily contactable. A huge plus for John.
Switching suppliers is supposed to be easy. In John’s case it presented numerous challenges.
Inaccessible services
Firstly, accessing comparative analytical information requires accessing online web sites – not something with which he is familiar.
Next, his current supplier is impossible to reach by phone, preferring customers to use online Chat via their app. John has a smartphone. But he has not mastered it – nor the utility apps that have been installed for him on it. Fat fingers, poor eyesight, and a small screen don’t help. But with his neighbour’s intervention, he managed to initiate switching energy suppliers.
A few days later, his neighbour called to check on progress. Nothing had happened.
Buried in a huge pile of emails, of which John was completely unaware as he rarely checks his email, were multiple messages from his energy supplier saying they could not approve the switch as he needed to clear his balance.
So with the help of the neighbour he paid off his outstanding debt. And not unreasonably John expected the process of switching to now go ahead.
A few more days passed, and once again the Good Samaritan called by. The supplier switch had still not completed. Now it was not just John who was frustrated but the neighbour too. Being able to call the new energy supplier and speak with one of their agents, John discovered that as time had lapsed, so had his supplier switch request. There was nothing his desired energy supplier could do. John had to contact his existing supplier and initiate for a second time his request to switch suppliers.
The moral of the story
The American comedian Carrie Snow once said “Technology… is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.” And that is exactly how John feels.
John’s neighbour can operate a smartphone with ease. They are used to checking their emails regularly, and au fait with online chat. Most importantly, they are not frightened of accidentally breaking something. John recognises that, for this neighbour, technology can be a powerful tool. But for him, it is an exclusion. And not just in regard to switching energy suppliers. He has been signed up for inappropriate and expensive broadband, mobile and TV contracts – partly because he didn’t understand what was being offered, partly because he is not savvy about alternatives, and partly because he is too trusting that what he is being offered is a ‘good deal’.
Fortunately his Good Samaritans (he has had more than one) have spent many, many hours trying to extricate John from unsuitable commitments. But while John has found a cheaper energy supplier, his confidence has been severely hit. This very capable senior citizen has been made to feel useless. How can he change things? Will he ever be more comfortable, or able to cope, in the online world?
Digital exclusion
John’s plight of living in an increasingly unfamiliar world is not unusual. Research by Age UK has found that one in three (31%) of over 60s, equivalent to 5.1 million people, said their life is much harder compared to five years ago because the things they want to do are online.
“Older people have repeatedly told Age UK that they want to stay in control of how they live their lives,” Caroline Abrahams, Age UK Charity Director, tells East Anglia Bylines. “But if they find it difficult using the internet this forces them to rely on others, undermining their independence and sense of self-esteem.”
“However, we must not forget that many older people are not online at all,” says Abrahams, ”Some only use it in a limited way and others feel unable to keep up with the pace of digital developments. It is really important that whether older people use computers or not, they can still easily access the services they need.”
George Bernard Shaw once said, “The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that’s the essence of inhumanity”.
Let’s hope companies start to consider the ergonomic challenges faced by the elderly, and make provision for more direct human contact. Otherwise, with their technology, ever new, shiny, cost saving and efficient; the day will come when we will be the excluded ones. A battle for us and a loss for them, too.
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