[Conet] Would you help sort with informal survey

[Deborah Hart]

Informal survey - community e-democracy and digital divide

I am wondering if any of you on the list would have time to help with an 
informal survey?

We (microsyster) have been looking at how ICT is being used by CENs 
(Community Empowerment Networks) in London.

But the other side of the equation is that quite a few groups, particularly 
smaller community groups, are getting by on older donated computers - and 
some of 'e' solutions being implemented seem to ignore this 'digital 
divide' issue**.

So - does anyone on the list still have access to or use of an older 
computer, say a Pentium I or II, which has NOT had its original memory 
upgraded and is using Windows 95/98 and particularly if the browser is 
Netscape 4?  (And yes, people are still using it, we have web stats that 
show this.)

If you do - and you have the time - would you use this equipment to see how 
accessible / user friendly the web sites are for:

- your local authority
- your local CVS
- your CEN - if you have one
- and any other site that claims to be representative of / responsive to 
the local community

And ...  if you have even more time, can you check what happens if you set 
your browser to NOT display images if the site does not provide a text only 
alternative^^^^.

Please add which borough / metropolitan area etc..  (Not just London info 
sort.)

This obviously wont be a comprehensive survey, but would be a useful snap 
shot (as useful as quoting YouGov which is inaccessible to anyone using 
older, slower equipment but is frequently quoted by the media).

We don't intend to 'name and shame' - but would say something like out of 
20 (10?) tested 75% enabled access for users of older equipment.

Many thanks

Deborah

**
The other digital divide issue, ie those without computer equipment / dial 
up connection which was to be solved if we were to have e-government and 
more importantly e-democracy by 2005, by the proposal that UK Online 
Centres would be a place of internet access seems to be have been quietly 
accepted as a failure.

Many of the Centres that opened under the original funding (dfes and nof?) 
2 to 3 years ago and are still open are now either Learn Direct Centres (of 
which there are no statistics to say how effective this form of training 
is)  or some other fund chasing training centre rather than points of 
internet access for the community.

With typcial New Labour (non) spin the UK Online Centres site says the 
governments target for opening centres was been met in November last year - 
but has not been updated since.  This avoids having to take into account 
that three months later the Audit Commission reported that most UK Online 
Centres would have to close as there were no plans for core funding to be 
made available to keep them open as points of internet access for 
communities.

Still I bet a lot of consultants made money out of this!


^^^^
I'm not asking this in terms of addressing disability access, but again if 
you have older, slower equipment turning off images / graphics can make 
what is a dreadfully slow site slightly more usable.