As part of my regular nine to five job I occasionally observe digital inclusion coaching sessions. These are when someone with good digital skills helps try and teach someone else with less good digital skills. I watched one session and decided to make an observation to the person being helped, Janet.

Janet’s response was lengthy and quite rude. Then the tutor John then started having a go at me too. I was a bit shocked and surprised. I was just trying to make an observation. I had been helping a friend with poor digital skills and she has really developed, and the thing she most appreciates is the fingerprint reader on her phone. It stops the need for written down passwords. It is quick and easy. I said that once Janet got to this point then her confidence would grow really quickly.

It was the use of the word confidence that really needled Janet, who is an intelligent and feisty 80 year old. She really got quite pissed off. I tried to listen, but it was difficult while she attacked me. It took me a few days to understand the exchange and after a few weeks there was a mutual apology session between us both. Janet repeatedly apologised for being snappy and rude, I apologised for being a patronising idiot. Janet deserved that.

Because I had already discussed the exchange with the friend that helped, who then heaped further blame and recrimination on me, this time with as lot of rather salty language. I felt assaulted. But I wasn’t. I was clearly in the wrong.

But what had actually happened with Janet?

Janet feels that every time she goes for help people talk down to her and patronise her (the current tutor John is not like this at all). She goes to charities who get funding who offer her help, but the sessions aren’t what she wants. Worse, they aren’t frequent enough, and she constantly hears the word confidence, or it’s implied lack, which is in some way her fault. She feels that people have an opportunity to talk down to her, due to the fact that she has missed this particular technological boat. This doesn’t make her at fault. What makes her angry is that no one asks her what she needs and how she needs it delivered. Worse she feels forced to learn these things, and feels quite resentful of this. One particular bugbear is online banking. Old people want to go into banks and do their banking in person, apparently. It is part of the routine and structure of their lives.

I also discover that touchscreens don’t pick up old fingers very well. Quite a lot of the elderly need to use styluses as their fingers don’t register properly. This is a very bizarre bit of embedded prejudice in the technology they are trying to use. Why have these devices never been tested properly?

I have found this whole series of events has caused me to personally reflect. Firstly on my incredibly poor abilities as a digital skills tutor. But more importantly on the way we can belittle and talk down to people without even realising it. I have nearly a decade of lived experience of intermittent homelessness. I have very rarely been listened to, at all. But sometimes you are doing your best, you are bad at it, and you make mistakes. You don’t help, you inflame, you anger. Because unintentionally you have been prejudiced and belittling – in my case – by using the word “confidence”.

Now, Janet is now progressing really well. Which is great. But the thing that has made her keep going is Whatsapping her family and friends, not digital banking. She is delighted to be in contact with them.

A lot of this stuff would be much simpler if we just asked people what they want and tried to listen properly. I have a far easier time with another person, digital Tony. Who at least partly knows what he wants. And I have a far easier time because I ask: “Why are you here?”

He knows at least some of the reasons. But he doesn’t know that he also wants to come and speak about pottery. Some of us are just a bit lonely too. Sometimes you aren’t just digitally not included, you are just not included. Perhaps old people want to go to the bank because it makes them feel part of the world.

Let’s not talk about what lack of digital inclusion means for access to health services for the digitally excluded. That is the subject of another piece of writing. Tried to ring your GP lately or go into a surgery and book and appointment? You really need an eConsult. For an eConsult you need digital skills.