DTSI

Digital Technology and Social Inclusion

Our Work

Long Eaton 50+ Forum

A great example of the work of DTSI in practice is the Long Eaton’s 50+ Forum digital participation activities. The forum provides free weekly ICT support drop in sessions which offer older people in the community the education and support they need for a wide range of digital devices. You can find out more about the work of the Long Eaton 50+ Forum here.

Sus-IT

A number of the DTSI team have also been involved in the Sus-IT project, which ran from 2008 to 2013 with the aim of sustaining IT use by older people to promote autonomy and independence.

Sus-IT is a research project funded by the New Dynamics of Ageing (NDA) initiative, the largest research programme on ageing ever mounted in the UK. Research under the New Dynamics of Ageing programme impacts on policy decisions and scientific, technology and design choices that will make sure that older people will enjoy better quality lives.

The Sus-IT research project is:

  • Understanding the challenges faced by older people using computers
  • Identifying ways to help older people to be confident and competent users of computers and other digital products
  • Exploring how older people can be helped to keep using computers and other digital products if their capabilities and circumstances change

See the project briefing overview paper for more details

The work of Sus-IT is closely aligned with that of DTSI (it helps that there a number of people involved in both!), and as such the following outputs of the Sus-IT project are relevant to DTSI:

  • A conceptual model of the risks to sustaining digital engagement for older people (see Briefing Paper 1 for more details);
  • An innovative suite of tools, methods and guidance for working collaboratively, participatively and ethically with older people in research and in the design and development of ICT-based products and services (see Briefing Paper 2 and Briefing Paper 3 for more details);
  • An ‘adaptivity framework’ which has been applied to develop prototype software that helps to address problems encountered by people experiencing age-related changes in vision, dexterity and memory (see Briefing Paper 4 for more details);
  • A design catalogue of 40 product concepts aimed at the ICT industry to stimulate new product development for the older market (see Briefing Paper 4 for more details);
  • A user-generated strategy for provision of sustainable, community-based ICT learning and support for older people and a blueprint for design and implementation of such centres, with exemplars (see Briefing Paper 5 for more details).
  • Over 50 publications have been produced by the project team which document these outputs (see the publications list for more details)