Abhatoo - Centre Nationale de Documentation

Digital Literacy is increasingly becoming an essential life skill and the inability to access or use

ICT has effectively become a barrier to social integration and personal development. In

response, EU Member States meeting at Riga in 2006 agreed on a series of eInclusion targets,

including reducing by half the gap between digital literacy levels of disadvantaged groups and

the average for the EU by 2010.

This Report presents the outcome of the Digital Literacy Review undertaken by the Commission

as part of the commitments made in the Riga Declaration and in the eInclusion Communication. In

the framework of this Review, 470 digital literacy initiatives across the EU were analysed

together with the results of the digital literacy module of the Community Survey on ICT usage in

Households and by Individuals. The main conclusions are:

(1) Member States have invested in large digital literacy programmes over the last ten years

as part of their Lisbon priorities for information society and as a result regular Internet

use has grown rapidly, particularly among young persons for whom skill levels and usage

rates exceed that of the USA.

(2) Digital literacy remains a major challenge and more efforts need to be dedicated to

supporting disadvantaged groups, in particular those over 55.

(3) There is evidence that secondary digital divides may be emerging in relation to quality of

use and more needs to be done to increase the levels of confidence and trust in online

transactions and the use of ICT for lifelong learning for all.

The Review also identified good practices to bring disadvantaged groups online and the key

features are summarised, grouped according to: motivation, affordability and sustainability,

content and delivery and accessibility and usability.