Photo Credit: sicamp (C) creative commons attribution
As we leave 2010 and head into 2011, a sad thing has crossed my mind – we are leaving the Greatest Generation behind. I was having lunch with my great-aunt a couple of weeks back, she’s somewhere in her 80s or early 90s, I’m really not sure. At her age, she still works a few days a week and even has learned to use a computer at work. But she’s never bothered with the Internet. Yes, there’s stories of the “silver surfers” — but she’s not one of them.
Until recently, she really was fine with that, but she’s realized she’s being left behind. It’s not that she cares about learning the technology, and the family does a good job of calling and sending snail-mail cards and such. The issue is with community groups she belongs to — her synagogue, in particular. Like so many groups they do everything via email and online, which is fine for 99% of people. But what about those people truly caught in the digital divide?
We, collectively as a society, have an ethical responsibility to ensure that we don’t leave our elderly behind. Moving into the future community groups, and even possibly corporations, will need to develop new infrastructures and strategies to ensure that we don’t leave our elderly behind. Right now, it’s a matter of providing offline alternatives — maybe organizing a phone tree that notifies elderly members of upcoming events. But as the Silent Generation enters their golden years, they are digital. They use the Web, email, and smartphones. And leading edge Boomers, by no means elderly yet, are starting to feel the changes of age. The issue for them will be ensuring we are building tools and features that are accessible to arthritic hands and failing eye site.
At the corporate level, I think elder-care may be a new area of corporate social responsibility to explore in 2011 and on. We all are aging, despite our efforts to make it stop. With technology moving at the speed of light, it’s not a matter of ability to ease transitions into aging — it’s a matter of will and commitment. Imagine if every organization, corporation, PR group, and marketing team were judged on not only how profitable* their efforts were – but also by how accessible their websites, apps, and such are to the elderly. Besides just ensuring we don’t disenfranchise people just due to aging, we’d also be building a world that is probably easier for people who require assistive technology for other reasons.
What’s on your score card? Is it just dollar signs, or are people are part of how you measure success?
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*profitable could be simple ROI, or successful programs, grant applications or whatever you measure success by.
. a few years ago. I had completely forgotten about Sassy magazine, and suddenly I had a rush of memories. They didn’t publish it on Amazon’s Kindle platform, so it took until now for me to break down and buy a hard copy.
