Mission: Digital Inclusion - with Andrew Cushen
Andrew Cushen is the Engagement Director at InternetNZ and leads the Community, Events and Communications teams ~
I speak for myself when I say that I take the internet and everything it affords for granted. These days, at least in terms of access, it’s not often that I think twice about grabbing my smartphone, messaging a friend, scrolling through apps, purchasing something via online banking or downloading and listening to a podcast (hi!) - but as we’ll explore today, not everyone is included in this powerful internet space. And not being included can have massive repercussions, which will only increase as our lives and our world barrel towards an increasingly digital future.
Our guest today is the very engaging Engagement Director of InternetNZ, Andrew Cushen, who has over 15 years experience in managing relationships, messages and issues across the Internet, telco and tech sectors. InternetNZ is a non-profit organisation who are the guardians of the .nz domain names. They also have the social mission of creating an internet for New Zealanders that is safe, accessible and good, and a big part of their work advocates for digital inclusion.
In this episode, Andrew and I discuss what digital inclusion means, what some of the different elements of digital inclusion are and the straightforward, challenging and sometimes complex hurdles that exist within each of those elements.
This conversation with Andrew makes it hugely apparent that although many of us can leverage and do enjoy what the internet affords, in an increasingly digital world, we must ensure that we are not leaving anyone behind - but of equal importance is making sure that the internet is a safe and trustworthy place in which to be.
Although InternetNZ is a New Zealand based organisation, this episode may provide some inspiration for ideas to pursue in relation to digital inclusion wherever you are in the world.
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You can learn more about InternetNZ by checking out their website. For specific info about Digital Inclusion, click here.
InternetNZ also support this show, which means that I am able to keep creating and you are able to keep listening to the different perspectives that are presented here at Selfie Reflective - so on behalf of us all, thanks a tonne, InternetNZ!
Tweet your thoughts on this episode to @selfiereflect or email selfiereflective@gmail.com
Transcript:
Andrew Cushen: So if you’re not connected, you’re increasingly excluded from not just the internet, but from accessing a whole pile of our social, economic, cultural, I’ve run out of words, (laughs) things.
{Introduction} Lucy O’Connor: You’re listening to Selfie Reflective, the podcast that scratches beneath the surface of social media. Each week you’ll hear from a new guest who presents us with a different perspective on the status update quo based on their background and experience. I’m your host, writer and creative, Lucy O’Connor. For three years I ran a personal brand which ended because of a conflicting love/hate relationship with social media.
After learning that I was not alone in that feeling, I launched Selfie Reflective, a space where we can explore, unpack and critically reflect on the technical and cultural issues that our social media landscape presents together. Selfie Reflective is brought to you with support from InternetNZ. I speak for myself when I say that I take the internet and everything it affords for granted. These days it’s not often that I think twice about grabbing my smart phone, messaging a friend, scrolling through apps, purchasing something via online banking or downloading and listening to podcasts.
Hey! But as we’ll explore today, not everyone is included in this powerful internet space. And not being included can have massive repercussions, which will only become more apparent as our world and our lives barrel towards an ever increasingly digital future. Speaking with us today is the very engaging engagement director of InternetNZ, Andrew Cushen.
InternetNZ is a non-profit organisation who own and manage the .nz domain names. They also have the social mission of creating an internet for New Zealanders that is safe, accessible and good and a big part of their work advocates for digital inclusion. Today Andrew and I discuss what digital inclusion means. What some of the different elements of digital inclusion are and the straightforward challenging and sometimes complex hurdles that exist within each of those elements.
This conversation with Andrew Cushen makes it hugely apparent that although many of us can leverage and do enjoy what the internet affords in an increasingly digital world, we must ensure that we are not leaving anyone behind. And equally, we must ensure that the space that we’re creating is safe for everyone too. Although InternetNZ is a New Zealand based organisation this conversation may provide some inspiration for ideas to pursue in relation to digital inclusion wherever you are in the world.
Enjoy the show!
Andrew, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today.
Andrew: Thank you so much for having me Lucy, lovely to be here.
Lucy: My pleasure! Tell us a bit about InternetNZ and the goals of the organisation?
Andrew: Yeah, we’re a unique organisation really. We run .nz for New Zealand, that’s what provides our financial means and a great, big responsibility for us to keep that .nz infrastructure up and running, to keep it secure and function well. So every website that you visit has got a .nz at the end, somehow has its origin in terms of its name with us. And that provides us with a revenue stream and that revenue stream is what we use for our social good mission in terms of how can New Zealand make the most of the internet.
And there’s sort of two 200-ish organisations like us around the world, but nobody quite does it like us in terms of that dual focus, the way that we do, of both managing the domain name space and then the social outcomes out the other end.
Lucy: Andrew, how did you get into this role? What’s your personal background?
Andrew: So, I did teleco stuff for a long time. I worked for a big, red teleco for many years and then I worked for a different teleco for a bit and I was always interested in exactly the issues that only InternetNZ gets to touch, right? And so those issues around digital inclusion and privacy and security, in that potential bit about how we make the most of the internet beyond what the commercial interests would necessarily want to do.
So this role is a good fit for my interests and when I get really exercised and passionate on that particular topic, I genuinely think that the internet is almost science fiction level cool in terms of how it’s able to be used. Like the ability for you and me to have this conversation, separated by hundreds of kilometres, in real time. The ability for us then to send it out to all of your listeners, the ability for those listeners to be anywhere in the world.
Like it’s actually immensely cool and when I think about the ability for that, that tech, just that core promise of being able to talk to, share an idea, share an inspiration with anybody in the world, well anybody that’s connected anyway, that’s awesome and that excites me. And realising as much of that potential as possible is a pretty cool job to have.
Lucy: Absolutely! That’s very inspiring actually.
Andrew: Thank you.
Lucy: I often feel a little bit disillusioned by the internet in terms of the issues that we face as a result of it, but you’re right, as soon as I get to talk to you, and in fact I wouldn’t even have this podcast if the internet didn’t exist. So it is incredibly cool and something that you know, a lot of us now take for granted.
Andrew: I remember when it started, because I’m presently older than I like to recognise sometimes (laughter) -
Lucy: You’re as young as you feel!
Andrew: It’s revolutionary. Look, no doubt that that comes with some challenges and issues too. I’m not that much of an optimist, but I do think that the benefits of this connectivity far outweigh those negatives and I do reckon we’ve got work to do to [net in 0.06.10] some of those negatives as well.
Lucy: That’s a nice segue into the idea of digital inclusion. So would you mind just explaining what digital inclusion is and how InternetNZ is working towards it?
Andrew: Yeah, I can talk about that pretty easily. Digital inclusion is a broad brush term for people not being online or the challenge of getting as many people online as we can. The easiest bit of that to understand, and unfortunately where the debate sometimes stops is about access to the internet. Do they actually have the ability in their home or their workplace to have an internet connection? And I want to deal with that simple bit first, right, even though there are layers of complexity on top of that.
Because the simple bit is the easy bit to understand, but it’s also the one that we’ve kind of solved, nearly solved, pretty well solved. New Zealand has got freaking awesome, on a world standard, internet connectivity. Not everywhere, not for everyone yet, but when we’ve got fibre infrastructure out to 75% of the population already and in the next couple of years it’ll go up to 87%, and that that fibre connectivity you can ring up your ISP tomorrow and you’ll get four gigabytes of connectivity to your home.
That is really, really world-leadingly awesome! Now sure, if you’re not in that 87% that can get fibre, you’ve got to be doing something else. On top of that we’ve got three mobile networks that have got 4G tech in the rolling up, 5G tech which plug a lot of those gaps, but a whole range of wireless internet service providers that do cool shit. We have Wi-Fi networks, basically, to connect people too. And then if you’re really, really, really remote, there’s satellite connectivity for people, which yes, it’s expensive, yes, it isn’t awesome, but it’s another miracle in and of itself that you can have the internet provided from space.
All this adds up that while connectivity isn’t completely awesome, I should say, it is actually really hard to find someone in New Zealand that can’t connect somehow to the internet. We don’t have an access problem in the traditional way that access used to be. Now, despite the fact that we haven’t got an access problem, that sort of reveals the other challenges in that digital inclusion. So you and me Lucy, no matter where we live in New Zealand, could connect somehow, but we still know that there is somewhere between 7-10% of the population, depending on the study, that isn’t connected to the internet.
Why not? We’ll put that up there, but [** 0.08.57] some of the reasons. We know it’s probably not connectivity because the networks are there and our analysis suggests it’s one of a couple of things. It’s affordability, right? Despite the fact that you’ve got the network outside your door, can you pay what is around 70-100 bucks a month in order to connect to that network? For a lot of New Zealanders, unfortunately, you can’t.
So despite the fact that we’ve got this infrastructure, there is a group of people who are excluded from being online simply due to the fact that they can’t afford that connectivity. And then that upsets me, in a way, that’s such a shame. We as a country have spent billions, literally billions on building this world class connectivity for everyone, we’ve already paid that bill, and yet we can’t afford the idea of then connecting people to the stuff that’s built?
And despite the fact that it’s on their footpaths, just outside their door, what’s in the airwaves around them, despite the fact that they could connect for as little as that 70 bucks a month, we’ve got people that can’t afford it and that’s a damn shame!
Lucy: What does InternetNZ do to help tackle that access and affordability problem? Is that to do with policy? How do you kind of meet that and who do you speak to to help to progress that?
Andrew: There’s a couple of things that we’ve done over time, right? And some [** 0.10.26]. You go back 10-15 years and one of the big barriers was that the market wasn’t competitive enough in terms of internet connectivity and that was blocking some people from being able to get online. Competition, in terms of network service provision has been fabulous in terms of driving the cost of things down. And it’s another one of those little, tiny miracles that the price of that awesome fibre connectivity that I talked about before, is the same as, or cheaper, than the copper stuff that we were using 10 years ago.
When you look at it in terms of inflation terms, in terms of performance terms, in terms of everything, it’s another miracle, almost, that that cost has sort of remained flat or dipped. So that focus that we had for a long period in terms of competition, the regulations, the rules of the game, so to speak, has helped that in the first instance. This is the stickier bit though, simply put. We’ve now got to the point, I think, where that group of people that are excluded due to affordability concerns are the people that are at risk of not being able to afford many numbers in that.
Despite the fact that commercial service provision number is pretty damn good, due to those initiatives, it’s still 70 bucks a month, for a lot of people that’s a bridge too far. So what we talk about is, for example, ideas like if you have a state house relationship, if you have a relationship with Housing New Zealand that is helping you in terms of affording a home for your family, then why shouldn’t that home come with internet out of the box, for example?
We’ve already made the decision that this household needs support in terms of housing accessibility, why wouldn’t we make that decision that that house has internet too? Because there’s clearly a need there and in terms of being a fully participatory 21st century citizen, you probably need connectivity too in that environment.
Lucy: I think it’s important to just touch on the reasons why being excluded from the internet are so problematic in this day and age and it might be obvious to some people, but you know, I think that because a lot of us do take this access for granted, what are some of the roadblocks that people who are excluded currently might face when living in this 21st century connected world?
Andrew: I think we’re seeing some of those challenges right now. You look at the Covid stuff and how much that information, how much of that essential information was distributed to people via the internet? Go to covid19.govt.nz to find out more is what all the TV ads said. Now, this was a national emergency grade, everybody had to understand the message. Everybody had to do what they were told, right, in order to flatten the curve and all of that other jazz.
It kind of shows to you that internet access, to be able to receive that information was essential, right? How else were you gonna find out what was going on Covid-wise? It was the hub that everything was going through and that sort of points to what’s going on here. Our government over the last 10 years, at least, has been talking about better digital services online, as they increase the availability and the visibility and the responsiveness of government services by driving more and more services online.
Can’t get a passport without filling out an online form, Can’t apply for any types of government support without getting online. How to start a business, can’t get a GST number, can’t do any number of things, or if you can, be prepared to wait on hold for a while, because so many of those essential government services, those basic things that we need to do in order to access our government, are online now.
And that’s before we even start thinking about bank branches closing. Everybody needs a bank account. A lot of those are closing because they’re investing in online services. Or you even have to go pay to go to the bank somehow as well. Entertainment has moved online, buying a home has moved online. Sure, in many of these cases there are still some sort of offline service provision, but I challenge anybody to tell me how those offline means have got easier while at the same time the online ones have got way easier.
If you’re not connected, you’re increasingly excluded from not just the internet, but from accessing a whole pile of our social, economic, cultural, I’ve run out of words (laughter) things, that are part of being a New Zealander now. Hey, go to the doctor, you can book your appointment online, well; you can’t if you’re not online (laughter). All of these particular things now mean that in order to, for you and I to participate fully, need some sort of online connection. That’s the problem.
Lucy: So, I want to go a little bit deeper into that and think about some of the issues that might arise with being excluded from a platform like Facebook, or Instagram. Things that, you know, me as a privileged person who can access and afford the internet, check and are a part of every day. And it’s quite evident talking to you that I have privilege in that I can choose to leave those platforms, which are sometimes what I feel like doing, but you know, that in itself, getting to that point where I’m just overwhelmed with information from scrolling through Instagram for four hours, that is a real privilege that some people don’t have. So what would be a few ideas for what the problem is with someone who is excluded from those social media platforms that we sometimes love to hate, or hate to love?
Andrew: This is where a large part of our social lives and our connectivity comes from now. Again, I want to use a Covid example because during Covid we’re all locked inside, heaps of us were using those social media platforms to stay in touch with the people that we miss and we couldn’t see anymore. The social media landscape is a really tricky one to me. It raises a lot of interesting challenges and we could go there, we don’t necessarily need to go there.
At the end of the day the basic proposition of being able to have your friends online and be able to talk to and interact with people is a good thing. And we saw that again during the Covid stuff, that some degree of connection was great for everybody’s mental health and wellbeing during that, and those social media networks do that.
It’s another feature of how life is in the 21st century. And if you’re digitally excluded, again, that’s not a life that’s for you necessarily. Hey, so-and-so’s birthday party has been announced on Facebook and you didn’t see it. There’s been a really cool debate on Twitter that you didn’t see. Did you see my dinner last night on Instagram? (Laughter)
Lucy: Fascinating stuff!
Andrew: Things that you can’t necessarily participate in.
Lucy: Yeah.
Andrew: We can dismiss things in terms of saying, oh, it’s just frivolity and dinner and a birthday party. But the sheer fact that there are billions of people that use these services shows that there is some need for human connection and networking and friends and family that those networks provide. If you’re digitally excluded, then you’re excluded from that too. Sometimes it’s a good thing because platforms can be problematic -
Lucy: Yes.
Andrew: But we don’t go there.
Lucy: Well, I want to go there actually.
Andrew: Oh! We’ll go there after all (laughter)!
Lucy: Podcast about social media, let’s dive into those things too. I mean a lot of what you do in terms of digital inclusion is to do with trust. And you know, we’re seeing, as well as all the good stuff, as well as the connectivity, I think that there’s an increasing distrust towards the people who operate these platforms. We’re learning a lot more about things like surveillance and privacy; we’re seeing some horrific discourse play out in terms of online bullying.
So I think that those platforms are a really interesting space and they operate under a really interesting paradigm. So, wherever you didn’t want to go, feel free to just go there. What are your thoughts and concerns with the social media space?
Andrew: Before I do that I’m going to ask you and your listeners for a sidebar here because this trust thing is another one of those barriers to inclusion. Say for example you can afford it and say for example that you have great connectivity outside of your door. If you don’t trust that online environment, then you’re going to be excluded in a different way again. And that comes up in some of those percentage points too, in terms of great, I can get it, I can afford it, but I just don’t want to be there because I don’t trust that. I don’t feel safe and secure there.
Now that’s a different form of an inclusion challenge and after all, I am glad we went here because these are some of the things that come up in terms of that trust challenge. And it’s really tricky (laughter) okay, in the sense that social media stuff is a miracle. It’s another one of those miracles and I keep on using that word because I think that some of the stuff is magical, simply put. And when I think about what we’re able to do now using these internet technologies, it’s freaking sweet!
But by the same time it’s got some really dark shadows and dark corners around it all. What happened in that horrible Christchurch attack business showed some us, it was really horrible what happened in Christchurch, that horribleness being uploaded using the internet and shared via social media platforms. Means that that horribleness was able to escalate and keep coming back and stay online and shared around the world in a way that was driven by social media, driven by algorithms and driven by some of the users on those platforms to look at it, in order to be able to keep sharing that part.
That’s a horrible example to use but it sort of illustrates the point as well that social media platforms have an immense power to be able to share harmful information as well. And there are really huge and really valid questions about what responsibilities and obligations those platforms should have on that. Now, if you run a TV network, you can’t ad nauseam play horrible content out to an audience whenever you feel like it because of territorial laws, around broadcasting standards.
Because even at some level you’d like to think that the owners of many of those networks have a social conscience behind these things, about what they’re doing, and again, driven by some of those ethical concerns and some of those legal restrictions that they have. We don’t have any of those instruments on social media. Some of these platforms are billions of people large. They operate in every jurisdiction around the world.
We’ve seen challenges in this country. Late last year, for example, where a large social media platform that you can identify, bridged a court order in terms of sending out information to any number of New Zealanders. It was actually suppressed, legally suppressed under New Zealand law. You cannot name this person, lo and behold, they did. So that’s one of the challenges here.
Whose law do these platforms follow? You get a bit [** 0.22.11] on it, right, where does law come from and I’m sorry everybody, I only did first year law and I didn’t pay a lot of attention. But law is a sort of manifestation at some level of the beliefs and attitudes and standards of the society that they come in, right? The law is there to say that in this space this is okay and this isn’t okay, right? That’s kind of what a law is all about.
And yet you have sometimes these platforms that are operating in a way that you and I can interact with in our territory, in a space where we’re defined as a country, that’s not cool and that is cool, in a way that’s uncool. [** 0.22.51] follow our rules, in fact the enforceability of a whole pile of those things gets really, really tricky and hard. So you can’t go to the law for this answer necessarily, we don’t have easily accessible instruments on an international level to say these are the rules for these multinational platforms.
We’re kind of reliant on their goodwill, their sense of social conscience and their private rules set in terms of how those things are run. If I was to be really shrill and dramatic about it, the rules for these platforms that have billions of people on them is ultimately determined by some dude in California, cause it’s his private playground. And they are all usually hims, I’m not trying to be too gendered here about it, it’s just that these are the guys that run these things, right?
And they choose the rules and then some horrible shit happens, I’m sorry (laughs), that what we do about it? Our own real option is to turn around and go, you know what, I’m going to forego those birthday party invitations and snaps of people’s dinner because I don’t want to be part of this anymore. The real debate in my head in terms of whether I go, I’m just not cool with this anymore and I don’t want to be part of it.
Lucy: That’s the other thing isn’t it? I mean do you want to be included in the platforms, like Facebook or Instagram which do allow very bad things to occur on those platforms? I mean I’m not sure, and I think any person who is not the status quo and you know, puts their head above water, so to speak, and publishes themselves on these platforms, there’s a real risk of being bullied and being abused and I think that that is something that a lot of people don’t want.
So it becomes a space that kind of mimics the real world where you know, those structures and those fears do exist in the online space as well which you know, doesn’t always feel like a very inclusive space for everybody.
Andrew: Totally right. There are double edged swords around all of this stuff. This is what makes it both fascinating and challenging and a whole pile of different things. Because what you’ve said is totally true, I don’t disagree with it at all. And it’s also true that for many of these people they find connection and solidarity and networks, they build online communities that accepts them more than perhaps the offline world did. That’s a double edged sword bit here.
Sometimes exactly that same pattern plays out in both ways, at the same time for the same people. There are wonderful things that happen there too, but sometimes terrible, terrible stuff happens as well.
Lucy: Exactly and the not so good communities can also form, so that’s another thing. (Laughs) I mean it’s just such a challenging, as you say, double edged sword kind of space. I hope that we’re making progress but I feel is like a lot of the time we’re chasing our tail after the fact rather than being able to pre-empt exactly what might happen next. It is just an interesting ever evolving high ground. I think that’s a really apt word to use before.
Andrew: You’re totally right, right? So for every kid that’s looking for somebody like them online and finds a wonderful community of people like them that they gain confidence and solidarity and belonging and all of those great things for, there’s also someone that’s finding solidarity to go burn down a cell tower because they think it spreads Covid. All of those connectivity bits don’t just happen on the cool, nice, lovely conversations.
There’s evidence now that shows that it is providing solidarity and connection and reinforcement and empowerment to nutcases. I’m sorry, I’m just gonna go out and call a lot of these things nutcases, which is my belief. Who am I to go and call these people nutcases? Well, any Christian private citizen says that some of these things are nuts! (Laughs)
And we’ve seen that some of the counter protesting, for example, against the Black Lives Matter being driven online, just like the Black Lives Matter is driven online, again, double edged swords. In an offline world, as we’ve seen again with Covid stuff, being on an island at the bottom of the world has been pretty good because we’re isolated from a whole pile of things, we can shut the border and we can keep things out. You can’t do that on the online world. There’s no border.
Lucy: The other thing I want to touch on is the idea of inclusion involving a certain amount of internet and social media, arguably, proficiency. You know, you’ve got to be able to understand how to use these tools. I guess I’m kind of almost just a digital nation; it comes quite easily to me, having grown up with some of these things in my life. So, how much of a role does being able to understand the online world come into digital inclusion and how you’re tackling that issue?
Andrew: Oh, I’ve seen some beneficial segues and interviews before, but this is a great one because that skills piece is a huge part of the digital inclusion challenge as well. If I just go back to the start, to rattle through them. Have you got connectivity? Probably. Can you afford it? Maybe. Have you got the trust in the environment that you want to use those things? For many people, no. Do you have the skill to be able to be online and do stuff too? It is easy for some of us to sit there and say, just turn the thing on, open a browser, type in a domain name, go to this particular website, fill in the online form.
Just think of the things that you do in your basic internet everyday life and think about where and how you learnt how to do these things? And when we ponder that, I don’t think it’s too much of a leap to think and say that there are some people that, hundreds of thousands of people that have never been taught this, they don’t know how to do this.
And it’s not easy to learn. You can’t just go out and say, hey, person who is digitally included, you’ve got fibre outside your doorstep and you should get it now, here’s a laptop, go fill your [boots 0.28.47]. That person needs more than that and what we do see in the digital inclusion space is that many of the people that aren’t digitally included are those where there are any number of these issues intersecting, but there is a great big skills problem there too.
They need to be taught, they need to be instructed, they need to be encouraged, they need to be trained in order to get that value online. How do you get a passport? How do you fill out this form? How do you access this service? How do you get a Netflix account? How do you use the Netflix account you’ve got? Those things aren’t necessarily simple if you’ve never done them before.
Lucy: And I think that plays into the trust piece a lot, just hearing you speak. Because people who don’t have the skills probably don’t have as much trust in the platform or perhaps they get burnt very quickly. For example they might be embroiled in a scam because they don’t have that internet proficiency or platform proficiency, so you’re right. I mean it does, it just all overlaps doesn’t it and there’s no one easy solution.
Andrew: These things don’t exist in a vacuum, no, they all reinforce each other. Why would I pay for something that’s going to rip me off and that I don’t know how to use? Why would I learn to use something that I can’t afford? Why would I train myself on something that isn’t even available at my home? That’s why we fundamentally believe that if you’re going to solve the digital inclusion challenge, you’ve got to look at all of that.
You have to look at all of that. Now, if we could look at that as a cost and a challenge and an imposition and all of that other jazz, right. Like I said, it’s somewhere, depending on the study, most of the numbers say between 7-10% of the population, 7-10% always sounds kind of easy solvable and awesome, right, because it means that 90-93% of things are done. And I don’t know about all of you, but whenever I’ve got 90-93% on something, I have been jazzed! That has been a victory!
In this case though, when we’re talking about 7-10% of New Zealanders, it’s useful to remind everybody that that means 250,000 to 500,000 people. That’s a shitload of people! Sorry (laughter), but it is. That is the scale of this that we are talking about. And I do get frustrated sometimes because we’ve done such awesome work as a country. We, the taxpayer, we the New Zealand citizen paid for a lot of this connectivity to be as awesome as it is. We paid for it because of the potential that it has to be better for everyone.
Yet we have 350,000 to 500,000 New Zealanders that can’t be part of that? That sucks! It’s an obligation almost to realise the benefit of all of the hard work that we did as a country to get to this awesomeness, to make sure that everybody could be part of it. That’s how we realise the value of this investment. Ages ago, I can’t even think of how long ago, we thought it would be an awesome idea to give everybody plumbed water to their home. We didn’t just stop doing that when we went, hey, sweet, we’ve only got 7-10% of people left, so that’ll be good enough [for jazz 0.32.03].
I know that some people still rely on water supplies and blah-blah-blah, but by the same token, we didn’t do it with power, right? We don’t do it with water, we have some sort of sense that there are common utility things that are just good for people that live in this country to have. I think the internet is turning into one of those things.
Lucy: It sounds like the internet is a right, a fundamental right, to have access to.
Andrew: That’s where a lot of this debate starts to go. You don’t necessarily put it into some fundamental rights framework. I don’t know whether that’s necessarily productive, but like we’ve already talked about, you kind of have to have it, right? Because it’s just nearly essential for doing any number of modern things, and that’s what we realise now in 2020. Are we going to let this problem just sit on the too hard shelf until 2030s when things have grown even further than that?
Do we wait until the only way that you can access your government is wholly online and then go, oh, gee whizz, we probably should solve that 7-10% problem now because now they’re totally without ways to access it. This gets harder every time. When is the moment when we turn around and go, oh, okay, yeah, should probably get around to solving that?
Because that’s the thing too, sorry, I’m almost getting all ranting on you, I’m sorry -
Lucy: No, it’s great, I love the passion!
Andrew: Thank you! All of these digital inclusion things are solvable, as a country we keep on saying, oh, but it’s too hard to solve the digital inclusion problem and we need more data and blah-blah-blah. Honestly, those conversations have been going on for ages. And part of me goes, just really? We can actually fix this now. There’s the question, well, it is a question of investment, there’s a question of realising that investment and there’s a question of turning around and saying, no, no, no! No, if you really want to be part of this, we will fix it for you. That, to me, is a quintessential government challenge and problem, to turn around and say, yes, I will fix this.
Lucy: Andrew, I know this is quite a big question to kind of wrap things up with, but I feel like it would do the interview a disservice if I didn’t touch on it. So I just want to get your opinion on how good of a job the internet does at including people who are not fully abled. People who have disabilities, people who might be physically disabled, people who have hearing impairments -
Andrew: This is the space that I’m learning a lot about at the moment because it’s really front of my mind. And there is a group of people that are excluded in a different way from being online due to [** 0.34.50] these challenges. Let’s just state, some of the obvious things, because it’s useful to start with obvious examples sometimes. This is a recorded medium that we’re using right here. It is done on a web browser which is inherently, requires sight.
There’s wonderful things that what used to be called the Foundation for the Blind and I can’t remember its new name right now, has been doing and trialling voice access through technology in order to be able to ameliorate access to the internet for those that are blind or have low sight. And it’s a really fabulous initiative that we’ve done a bit of work with them on in terms of how you can deploy voice activated technology to be able to resolve some of the interface challenge.
For the hearing impaired, a lot of the modern internet also involves sound, this involves sound. How do you hear this? And that is why, and a great thing that you see so many of the government have been using sign language interpreters beside them now when they’re broadcasting online. The wonderful world of captioning that gets in there as well. In order to access this you’ve probably had to type on a keyboard, typing on a keyboard is not necessarily a given for any number of people too.
So what can be done about that? There’s web consent accessibility guidelines which the New Zealand government has committed to, not necessarily all of the rest of the internet is committed to, unfortunately. Those are commonly available standards that are mandated in some countries. Parts of Australia mandate it. You have to build your website in accordance with those web content accessibility guidelines.
As somebody has said to me recently, those web content accessibility guidelines aren’t kind of just some argh, onerous thing. They’re actually just good web design stuff; actually, that makes your website more usable for people anyway. I think we do need to have more of a conversation about are we building tech that as many people can use as possible. As other people pointed out to me, there’s up to 20% of the population that have some sort of impairment in terms of interacting with these tools the way that I do, 20%.
Twenty percent, again, I don’t even need to contextualise that in terms of numbers, that’s already just a huge percentage of people. This is just kind of good practice and if that’s not a motivator, being a good person is a motivator and doing best to include people in terms of accessibility, is a useful thing to do.
Lucy: It’s been a real joy to talk to you and I feel very lucky that New Zealand has you batting in its corner; it was really great, thank you so much.
Andrew: It was fun, thank you Lucy.
{Outro} Lucy: That was Andrew Cushen, the Engagement Director of InternetNZ on the Selfie Reflective podcast. And just for the record, when Andrew mentioned the Blind Foundation of New Zealand earlier in the show, that organisation is now called Blind Low Vision NZ. If you’re interested in learning more about InternetNZ as an organisation and the work they do in relation to digital inclusion, I’ve left some links in the show notes. InternetNZ is also an organisation that supports this podcast in a truly amazing way, so I’d like to take a moment to thank them so much for sharing the vision and believing in the mission of this podcast.
If you have any thoughts or reflections in response to this episode about digital inclusion, maybe you were challenged, maybe you gained a new perspective, or maybe you feel like something is missing from the conversation. Don’t hesitate to get in touch by emailing selfiereflective@gmail.com. And if you enjoy Selfie Reflective, I’d be so appreciative if you could jump onto your favourite podcast platform and rate, review and subscribe to the show.
I know it’s a little something extra, but it makes such a massive difference in terms of helping other people discover that the show exists and that these different perspectives are available. Thank you so much in advance. Until next Tuesday, I’m Lucy O’Connor, thank you so much for listening. Selfie Reflective is written, hosted and produced by me, Lucy O, final episode audio and quality control is all thanks to Tom Frankish.