At a previous Momentum Group meeting, Dick Penny mentioned the difference Bristol Wireless‘ work at Princess Royal Gardens had made to the lives of elderly residents (including saving legwork going to the bookie!). To reinforce further the difference that IT can make to the lives of older people, I’d like to introduce you to a member of my family. Like Donald Crowdis, the nonagenarian blogger referred to in Clare’s piece, she doesn’t live in Bristol, but I believe her tale still has relevance to us all.
Gladys, my 75 year old mother, is someone to whom the phrase ‘digital inclusion’ would probably conjure up notions of something stuck in one’s finger. Being largely housebound nowadays, she spends some time each day watching Christian cable TV and grew increasingly frustrated when her favourite programme kept referring people to its website and encouraging them to send emails.
So Gladys, who’d always done manual work and never owned a computer or logged onto the internet in her life, decided to do something about it. At the age of 73 she bought herself a laptop, enrolled on a learndirect course to learn how to use it and signed up for broadband.
In the end, Gladys completed 10 IT courses in a row and, two years further on, now uses her laptop every day for browsing the internet, email and instant messaging.
Gladys says: “I love watching Christian television on Sky. The programmes always finish by asking people to email the show or to look at the station’s website. That inspired me to get into computers”.
Finally, her four granddaughters must also be very impressed that Granny now knows how to use instant messaging on MSN with all the whistles, bells, funny emoticons and acronyms included. She also emails using text messaging language; mine arrive full of abbreviations and figures, e.g. “thank u 4 yr last msg…”
Connecting Bristol is the city’s response to the Digital Challenge.
