Using the internet and apps on smart phones is commonplace for many older people.
Yet Age UK’s campaign ‘Offline and Overlooked’ highlights that 2.3 million older people in the UK aren’t internet users and this can make tasks such as banking, managing NHS appointments or even paying for car parking harder to access.
It’s also a question of choice – no matter your age – of preferring to handle finances, bills or health matters in person or over the phone. No one should feel forced to perform important tasks online if they don’t feel comfortable.
What Age UK are calling for;
- All public services, including the NHS, council services and other nationally-provided public services, must offer and promote an affordable, easy to access, offline way of reaching and using them.
- The Government must make sure local government receives enough funding to provide offline services.
- More funding and support provided to enable people who are not computer users, but who would like to be, to get online.
- The Government should lead on the development of a long-term, fully-funded national Digital Inclusion Strategy, to support people of all ages who want to go online to do so (the last such strategy was produced in 2014).
- The Government should change the law to require banks to maintain face-to-face services.
- Banks must accelerate the roll-out of Shared Banking Hubs to meet the high and continuing demand for face-to-face banking services.
Find out more and sign Age UK’s petition to make sure everyone can access the services they need.