COVID-19 brought many changes in our lives, causing serious and unprecedented problems. An age group that struggled and suffered quite a lot were seniors. Not only they found themselves scared and vulnerable in front of the pandemic, but also, they felt lost in the occurring digitalisation of everything. Bills that had to be paid online, taxes, bank transactions, and even booking vaccine appointments, for a large part of the population, was a hardship. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, a major change occurred in the banking sector, concerning mainly cashless payments, be they in the form of contactless card payments or wire transfers via eBanking. On a similar scale, more and more shops and restaurants have been compelled to build on their e-commerce potential, as the need for online orders has seen an increase to the detriment of physical purchases. Although the positive effect that this strategy has had on the restriction of the pandemic, little importance has been noted on the general practicality of Internet banking and online payments in the modern era. Many senior members of our society turned to their children or even grandchildren for assistance. Yet, online transactions are now an established reality growing daily.
Because of this handicap, this project wants to address the digital transformation of society and services offered by both the public and the private sectors of the economy by developing and offering high-quality, flexible learning materials to senior citizens and adults facing problems because they don’t know how to use the internet applications that would make their lives easier. This lack of digital knowledge and skills provokes stress and the feeling they are excluded.
More precisely, DIGITALIATORS’objectives are as follows:
1. To define the needs of senior citizens in all participating countries by detecting the level of competence of seniors, to map
the most common online transactions in each country as well as to reveal the reasons hindering senior citizens from using and trusting online procedures.
2. To develop high-quality capacity-building learning material for senior citizens, designed specifically to meet their needs as far as their online transactions are concerned.
3. To test the learning material produced in all participating countries in order to gather feedback from seniors, observe their progress and make the necessary corrections and adjustments.
