Digital Literacy

“Lower literacy is the Web’s biggest accessibility problem,  but nobody cares about this massive user group.”

Digital Divide: The Three Stages. Jakob Nielsen,  November, 2006.

Digital literacy means having the skills you need to live, learn, and work in a society where communication and access to information is increasingly through digital technologies like internet platforms, social media and mobile devices.

Some specific findings

25% digitally excluded, 10.5% is mobile only user

ADII 2023 link

What skills does the user need?

The user needs to know

  • where letters are on the keyboard
  • how to spell words

After typing ‘Cen’ into the search bar. The user needs to

  • be able to recognise words.
  • recognise the right link

There are no images to help.

Options of "centrelink","centrecom", "central", "central limit theorem" appearing after entrying "cen" in the Google search bar

What does that mean for websites?

For a broad audience, your websites need to have

  • little or no navigation
  • few steps
  • no inferences
  • no need to contrast or integrate information.

But 9% in Australia adults have even poorer skills. And 20% can not access the internet meaningfully.(2022)

Keep it extremely simple, or 2/3 of the population can not use your design.

What can we offer?

Digital design reflecting Easy English principles 

Improve your user interface design for the target audience 

Consumer review with people with low literacy and low digital literacy

Request a quote for support for your website design, social media and Apps.
cathy@accesseasyenglish.com.au
0466 579 855

Some other resources

At least one fact sheet in plain language and Easy English.

Graphs and links to Aus Digital Inclusion Index.  

2021 Australian Digital Inclusion Index launch 

Webinar YouTube link for subtitles  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2DREtDXwa0 

press release with headline data 

https://www.csi.edu.au/news/digital-inclusion-improving-nationally-but-more-to-do-on-affordability-and-equal-access/ 

Link to the dashboard to get some data 

https://www.digitalinclusionindex.org.au/interactive-data-dashboards/ 

this is the link to get to the dashboard where you can mess with the data  

One ppt from GAAD this year – maybe. As PDF or rotation on YouTube – will talk to Damien about these options.

Access Easy English
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