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Digital Inclusion and Active Ageing Developing a user-centred methodological approach to investigate the use of mobile phone among older people

Contemporary societies are facing two striking trends: widespread population ageing and rapid diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Since old age often implies ailing health and social isolation, societies could embrace the advances in ICTs to enhance social integration, health and active ageing. However, the complexity and novelty of ICTs threaten many older people with exclusion from their use. Older people could be offered eservices, which would improve their quality of life, if based on age friendly design. Although digital inclusion is strongly advocated in the EU research and policy strategies and associated with positive outcomes such as high quality of life for older people, and new market opportunities for ICT system providers, the uptake of assistive technologies (ATs) among elderly is slow-moving. In this context, mobile phones (MPs) represent an opportunity for digital inclusion due to their already widespread use among the elderly. Therefore, the project is directed towards studying sociotechnical affordances of ATs in mobile phones to foster inclusive and empowered ageing of the heterogeneous group of the elderly.

The project brings together over two decades of internationally recognized interdisciplinary research by the project team in areas of (a) social informatics, (b) social science methodology, including mixed-methods data collection and evaluation designs for elderly, (c) gerontology, (d) experience with large international (FP5, FP6, FP7, COST Actions, LLP, Interreg) empirical digital inclusion projects and (e) developments of web applications for elderly (online learning games).

Source (access date): Simobil – Slovenian Telecommunication Operator

Access date: 12.12.2021