The degree of digital literacy and social exclusion. A case study of the disabled, the elderly and the poor

Abstract

The paper is a review description of research on the so-called digital exclusion in Poland, in relation to the disabled, the elderly and the poor. At the beginning, what is social exclusion and digital exclusion was described and the question of whether the phenomenon of digital exclusion is identical with the phenomenon of social exclusion is addressed. Next, the scale of access to digital technologies in Poland, and especially to the internet, was discussed, taking into account first of all the social status of users, their education, age, gender and the regions of Poland that they live in. The background for the study is a review of research on the subject of digital exclusion of the disabled, the elderly and the poor. These analyses are an attempt to answer the question whether this problem concerns these three groups, and if so, to what extent. In order to diagnose the phenomenon under discussion reliably, the statistics on the number of disabled, elderly and poor people living in Poland, both official and unofficial, were also presented. The final part of the paper contains conclusions on how to prevent and combat digital exclusion, what social initiatives exist in this area to motivate digitally excluded people to use IT in their daily lives. Examples of social campaigns aimed at combating digital exclusion and government programs aimed at increasing access to the Internet in Polish municipalities for a wide range of recipients are given.