Inclusive Society

by Rodolfo Cattani

Participating in the information society: a promising avenue.

The importance of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the life of European citizens keeps growing, particularly for all those people who do not have immediate access to them, persons with disabilities being first.
As a matter of fact, ICTs are a development factor in accessing work and information, in social participation, but also in taking advantage of services relating to education, health, government, electronic commerce and communication.
In the actual stagnation phase or even economic recession, it is expected that ICTs will provide a boost for productivity and market, which are the main purposes of the Lisbon strategy which has difficulty getting forward.
What is known as e-Inclusion, the instrument to implement a fully inclusive, equal and developed information society, is an essential element for such a strategy aimed at economic and social progress through the initiative "2010 - A European Information Society for Growth and Employment" promoted by the European Commission in 2006. E-Inclusion can be defined as the driving force of the initiative requiring the involvement of European institutions, of state members, of the industry and organizations of users and consumers which collaborate to implement a shared and effective strategy.
At the end of the ministerial conference on e-Inclusion in Riga (Lettonia) in 2006, ministers have approved what is known as the Riga Ministerial Declaration "ICT for an inclusive information society", whose targets include halving the gap in Internet usage, and putting in place actions in the field of digital literacy and accessibility to ICTs by 2010.
However, reaching the objectives of the Riga Declaration has turned out to be rather arduous and the digital gap that is risking to make fruitless the project of social cohesion and economic prosperity seems today more tangible than yesterday. To make up for this negative situation, it is necessary to have a greater commitment from all, so that technologies be truly more accessible and economically affordable, user skills enhanced and ICT services delivered for effectiveness and accessibility to all.
The European Commission has published in November 2007 the Communication COM(2007)694 European 2010 Initiative on e-Inclusion "To be part of the information society" which aims to reintroduce the strengthening process of appropriation and skills development relating to ICT by users.
Proposed initiatives for 2008 are an awareness campaign "e-Inclusion, be part of it" which will generate various activities and end with a ministerial conference to share progress and enhance commitments, and serve as well as a strategic plan of action to get ahead with the realization of the Riga Declaration's objectives: to guarantee conditions so that everyone can access the information society, significantly reduce disparities in access across the EU, increase the availability of broadband (coverage) in under-served locations, tackle the gaps relating to skills development, accelerate the effective participation of groups at risk of exclusion, integrate actions in favour of e-Inclusion to maximize long-term impacts. These objectives will not be easily reached at the European level as a whole since there are prominent differences in the use of ICTs which in some cases are even getting more pronounced. This concerns the objective of the use of Internet, where it does not seem possible to close the gap between average EU population and older adults, women, people with a lower level of instruction, unemployed persons and regions with a slower development. It also concerns the objective of closing the digital literacy gap among the average EU population and some groups at risk of exclusion, where there remain considerable gaps for persons over 65 years old, those who are inactive on the work market and those who have a lower level of instruction; and the objective on accessibility of public websites of which only a small portion is accessible to persons with disabilities by respecting the WAICAG guidelines. ICTs allowed many people to realize significant progress, but the accessible ICT offer is still insufficient, there still are gaps in terms of digital skills and some categories of users do not succeed in keeping pace with evolution. If still 50% of the EU population does not use the Internet regularly, we should not be surprised that the level of exclusion is still high and the voice of users still weak. The ICT sector is also a provider of services that, without the solution to the problems indicated above, cannot be used by users who are disadvantaged.