Race Online 2012 has just published a new 38 page report with the title “Getting On – A Manifesto for Older People in a Networked Nation“. Working in a community with an older demographic, the report came at the right time for me to circulate amongst the service managers who need to design web pages with that in mind.
The report identifies the clear benefits for older citizens in use of the Internet enabling them to save money and effort by picking and choosing online when shopping, and reducing the need to travel. A lot of the content is repeated and I lost track of the number of mentions of the 5.7 million people who are offline, but on the positive side there figures such as that 10% of Internet users in the UK are over 65 and that they actually spend longer on the Internet than any other age group.
The report has also split the older population into three groups – ‘traditionalists’, ‘hesitators’ and ‘highly supported’, with the unfortunate recognition that the traditionalists at 43% are probably going to present the greatest challenge to get online.
Whilst the government is obviously keen to get as many people using self-service as possible, the carrot is that the technology also extends into life-long learning along with increased independence and well-being by the use of the communication tools.
The Great E-mancipator 
Hi there – thanks for mentioning our report!
13 mentions of the 5.7m figure is quite a lot, but it’s a shocking and very important stat – nearly two thirds of all offliners are over 65 years old…
Also, to be clear, we were actually saying that the 1.4m ‘Highly Supported’ will be the most difficult group to help online – over 75 years old (just 23% of over 75 year olds are online, compared to 57% of 65 to 74 year olds), most likely to be living in sheltered housing and more likely to have declining physical and/or cognitive capabilities.
They are also more likely to prefer or need supported / intermediated access.
Best regards
Ben
There’s a report from Fujitsu at http://www.fujitsu.com/uk/research/online-government/ that is not quite so aspirational.