Digital exclusion erodes human rights

40% of Belgians face digital exclusion in one way or another. This means that their fundamental human rights are under threat. Because what if you’re finding it increasingly difficult to make an appointment to visit your doctor because everything is digital? Or what happens if you’re looking for a new job, but don’t have the skills to apply online? A lot more people than we realise are affected by digital exclusion.

DigitAll is a Belgian coalition of businesses, social organisations and government bodies that are all working together to achieve greater digital inclusion. Recently, DigitAll launched an awareness campaign based on the topic “digital exclusion”. itsme^® has been a member of DigitAll since it was first established in 2020 and has signed a charter promoting greater digital inclusion with 45 other organisations. This charter contains 9 commitments for closing the digital divide.

What we’re trying to do with itsme^® is to enable everyone to take part safely and easily in the digital society. For that reason, digital inclusion, or rather digital fluency, has been an integral part of our mission since 2019. Using itsme^® as a digital key, our aim is to lower the entry threshold and make access to digital platforms easier, safer and more secure. The fact that the app is so easy to use plays an intrinsic part in that aim, but we are also working actively with aid organisations to better understand people’s specific needs, while also working with them to develop the right tools.

While the everyday use of itsme^® usually goes smoothly and without any problems, we can also see that creating or reactivating an itsme account may present a stumbling block for some people and can cause “digital stress”. We took this into account when developing our new website and what we have done is to try and guide our users as effectively as we can. Our YouTube channel also features instruction videos that explain every step in the process of creating an account. Not only have we produced those video in our 3 national languages (Dutch, French and German), but also in 15 other languages.

For aid organisations that receive questions about itsme (our “digital buddies”, as we call them), we have also set up a special itsme VIP form that is linked directly to our helpdesk. This enables us to help users even more quickly with any questions they may have about assistance with digital matters.

Through all this and more, our aim is to assume our full digital social responsibility and make our contribution towards increasing digital literacy.