No app, no entry: How the digital world is failing the non tech-savvy

The Good Things Foundation is the UK’s largest digital inclusion charity, seeking to help a million people to get across a tech divide that has deepened during the cost of living crisis. Natasha Bright-Wray, the foundation’s associate director of communications, says that “digitally excluded people are largely forgotten” by a government that boasts of making the UK a digital superpower but is apathetic about those left behind and lacks any meaningful digital inclusion strategy. The effects are conspicuous in the National Health Service, where improved digitalisation can bring greater efficiencies but often leaves those failing to benefit from the services. After all, as Bright-Wray says, one in 20 UK households have no home internet access. And in the case of the elderly, even if they do have access, they frequently have limited ability to use it. In much the same way, the notion that everyone has a bank account and a card or phone with money on it does not withstand a visit to your local supermarket, where it’s noticeable how many people avoid the checkouts that are “card only.” The cashless society is effectively already a reality for most of us, but there remains a minority for whom it represents a continuing headache.