For your Friday reading pleasure, the focus this week is on digital skills, or the lack thereof, that represents a major barrier to digital inclusion for billions of people. If you want to create usable and scalable ICT4D solutions, you can no longer ignore this issue. Expect much more on digital skills as we work to bring the next 50% of the world online.
Case studies of inclusive digital solutions for low-skilled and low-literate people
Released as part of the UNESCO-Pearson Initiative for Literacy: Improved Livelihoods in a Digital World, the first five case studies, in a series of 14, explore how inclusive digital solutions can help people with low skills and low literacy use technology in a way that supports skills development and, ultimately, improves their livelihoods. There are some great insights and lessons learned in designing for low-literate users. (UNESCO)
+ Meet the people behind the solutions and what inspired them.
Digital skills for work
The recently released UNESCO Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report tracks progress towards achieving SDG4 on education, including indicator 4.4.1: Percentage of youth/adults with ICT skills. The key messages: it’s really hard to globally track digital skills, and from the existing data the results are bad. Using ITU survey data, we see that most adults in low and middle income countries did not perform even the most basic ICT functions. For example, only 4% of adults in Sudan and Zimbabwe could copy and paste files; only 2% to 4% in Egypt and Jamaica could use basic arithmetic formulas in a spreadsheet. The question is: how relevant is copy and pasting in Sudan? Perhaps there is a need for differentiated skills based on local contexts. (UNESCO)
Mobile Internet Skills Training Toolkit
There are many excellent initiatives aimed at developing digital skills and literacy. One resource for everyone is the GSMA Toolkit, which is a guide for training people in basic mobile internet skills in India. What is useful is the accompanying ‘How To Guide’, designed to support replication of the Toolkit in different markets — in other words, for training of your users. (GSMA)
Low digital literacy a barrier for India’s poor to enjoy digital financial services
Policies to transform India into a digital economy have resulted in a range of new products aimed at achieving digital financial services (DFS) for all. But, argues IFMR LEAD, a number of barriers remain for India’s poor to enjoy DFS, including low levels of consumer capabilities. A 2016 FII survey found that 49 percent of Indians had low levels of digital literacy. This was even more acute for vulnerable groups: the elderly were 18 percent more likely than the youth to be digitally illiterate, and both women and those with lower levels of education were also less digitally literate than average. (NextBillion)
Designing for the “oral” segment
Clearly work is needed to up skill and develop suitable products for vulnerable groups. But how does one design a user interface for non- or neo-literate users, or those in the “oral” population, who may not be able to read or write, but are highly adept in handling cash and making financial calculations? In an insightful report, MicroSave and My Oral Village share the research, user definitions, design principles and first prototype for a mobile wallet phone app for illiterates. (Microsave)
Steven Vosloo 