Inclusive and Meaningful Access – Flash 09 2023
21 June 2023 | 12:30 - 13:15 EEST | Auditorium A3 | 
Consolidated programme 2023 overview / Flash 9
Session description
What will it take to recouple connectivity with inclusive and meaningful internet access?
While we are far from the finishing line, there has been immense progress and innovation in bringing more and more of the world’s population online. However, these successes have underlined the limitations of a connectivity-only approach to enabling societies through the internet. They point to the need to think more deeply both about the diversity of actions needed within dedicated digital inclusion strategies, as well as the place of internet governance decision-making within wider policy agendas, such as education, urban development and culture.
This flash session will provide an opportunity, drawing on lessons from over the days of EuroDIG, to share reflections and ideas on what the components of a comprehensive and integrated approach to meaningful access could be, with a particular focus on how pre-existing multi-purpose centres such as libraries can be better mobilised to this end. The conclusions will feed into ongoing work to establish how we can better integrate and realise the potential of such infrastructures.
Format
Further reading
Links to relevant websites, declarations, books, documents. Please note we cannot offer web space, so only links to external resources are possible. Example for an external link: Main page of EuroDIG
People
Coordinator
- Stephen Wyber, International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions
- Stephen Wyber is Director, Policy and Advocacy at the International Federation of Library Associations, which brings together libraries of all types from around the world to deliver on the right of everyone to benefit from excellent library services. His team focuses on helping to ensure that the potential of libraries to contribute to achieving wider policy goals is recognised and realised, through engaging both with the global library community and key stakeholders
Key Speaker
- Maia Simonishvili, National Parliamentary Library of Georgia
- Nana Ama Yeboah Ammo, ISOC
Messages
provided by the coordinator:
- Meaningful access requires a connectivity+ approach, addressing all three elements of the triangle of connectivity, content and competences
- The internet has clear potential to support efforts to improve lives, but this requires us to keep this goal in mind in the choices we make
- In particular, we need to take a proactive agenda built around the internet we want, rather than a reactive agenda aiming just to address discrete problems as they emerge
- Doing this will require collaboration and partnerships. It is a failure when people are not included – either in the process or the results of our work. A particular example here is that of developing local repositories of content, helping to people access relevant materials for them. This approach is ambitious compared to a more tech-centred approach, but it is also essential.
- Libraries have a huge potential to support this agenda, but we need to get better at sharing good examples of meaningful connectivity projects, among and outside of them.