Written evidence to the Women and Equalities Committee's inquiry, The rights of older people (ROP0011)

Summary: In what follows I will present how older people can mistakenly be taken as digitally included, when
they actually rely on relatives to access digital services. In several cases the following have been
found in my research:

• They have access to the internet, have a smartphone and have an email address which
  could be taken as ‘connected citizens’. However, they are not able to connect to WiFi, to
  use Apps rather than those for communication and they did not create their email account.
  
• Without family around, they would be offline or unable to use most of the digital services.
  
• I will also relate the exclusion to the prevalence of disability that older people can have.