Internet Services for the underprivileged - Computer courses for the elderly and unemployed at a residents' meeting room

摘要

Accessibility means that the use of services should be open to all, to people of all kinds and in all situations. This study in barriers to Internet use for the elderly and unemployed is based on material gathered from persons attending a computer course run by the City Council at a residents' meeting room in Oulu, Northern Finland, through interviews carried out before and after the course and observations made during it. Half of the participants were making e-transactions regularly a year after the course, the most common types being the paying of bills and the sending of e-mails to relatives. It is evident that Web pages provide far too much information at one glance for the elderly to digest, that the basic concepts of the Internet and the metaphorical terms associated with the user interface are by no means obvious, and that the illogicalities of services can easily discourage elderly people from using them. The general accessibility instructions place emphasis on the problems of people with poor eyesight, but surprisingly, none of the people interviewed suffered from the small size of the print on Web pages and nobody complained that their eyesight was a hindrance. Another surprising observation was that using the Internet was mostly regarded as preferable to visiting an office. The elderly people were in their own opinion skilled at using a mouse and at moving rapidly between Web pages, but observations suggested that they had considerable problems with using a mouse and lacked the boldness to move back and forth between pages. The sites that they visited were predominantly Finnish ones. There were also great variations in the degree to which these people felt that they were a part of the information society.