2.4.5 Access to Technology

Equity of access to technology is an important social good, and is often reflected in concerns with a growing ‘digital divide’ in society. Several researchers have examined this concern as it affects people with psychosocial disabilities and lived experience.³⁵⁰ For example, Til Wykes has commented in relation to mobile technology that:³⁵¹

In the UK, Dan Robotham and colleagues looked at ‘digital exclusion’ facing 241 participants with mental health diagnoses.³⁵² The researchers concluded that the ‘digital divide’ was difficult to overcome but that successful steps could be taken to improve access to digital technologies for people who lack the knowledge, skill and financial resources, and that such steps could even form part of an essential service for citizenship and community wellbeing.

Digital inclusion strategies – such as subsidising the purchase of equipment, internet billing support, education to improve digital literacy, and so on – may be required to prevent people becoming excluded from both digitised health and social services, but also from society in general.³⁵³ However, addressing digital equity may also mean ensuring that people can access entirely ‘non-digital’ resources for those who do not wish to, or cannot, use digital technological approaches to care and support. Equally, it is important to avoid generalisations about people with lived experience or psychosocial disabilities’ supposed deficiencies in digital literacy and access. False assumptions about people with disabilities’ supposed passivity and incapacity can result in paternalistic, top-down approaches that falsely presume a need for state and industry intervention.³⁵⁴ One public inquiry in Victoria, Australia, recommended that governments could help address the ‘digital divide’ in the mental health context by ‘enabl[ing] mental health and well-being services to offer people living with mental illness or psychological distress access to devices, data and digital literacy support, where it is their preference to use digital services but they are otherwise unable to do so.³⁵⁵ Elsewhere in Australia, case law has established the potential for social security recipients to use their disability support funds for internet hardware and data plans.³⁵⁶