Aged care facilities should offer internet access

Since 2007, Dr Murnane has been working with residents of Leith Park retirement village in Diamond Creek as part of a study on teaching elderly people to use the internet.

His star pupil is 99-year-old Elsie Hammond, who can now use Skype to keep in touch with her son in France.

“The residents I work with are all over the age of 85. I’ve been working with them since 2007, and now many of them can use email by themselves,” Dr Murnane says.

“Email is the most popular activity among our participants, with its ability to send photographs particularly valued. However, some participants are also developing an interest in researching family histories online, and the group has a growing Facebook presence.”

Dr Murnane is concerned only a small number of aged care facilities offer internet access to residents.

“Internet access provides an important opportunity for mental stimulation, which is closely tied to older people’s health,” he explains. “It is also a liberating outlet for those confined to a single building on a day-to-day basis. Everyone living in retirement facilities deserves to experience these benefits.”

Dr Murnane disputes widely-held beliefs that residents of aged care facilities and other elderly people are too old to learn to use the internet.

“The way we talk about the internet, for example by referring to “digital natives” and “immigrants”, helps build a culture of fear among the non-computer literate. We need to stop thinking about the internet as the preserve of the young; indeed, the way the world wide web enables us to explore, learn and communicate might have been especially designed for the elderly or disabled,” he says.

The long-running study is supported by a small grant and the donation of University computer hardware. It is filling a gap in knowledge about how elderly people can learn to use the internet; what challenges they face, and how they can be overcome.

“We have gained lots of information about the practicalities of teaching elderly people to use the internet,” Dr Murnane says. “For example, a trackball mouse is much easier to use than a standard mouse, as it has only one button to press. The keyboard repeat function should be turned off, as keys are often held down while attention is diverted elsewhere. And it is useful to select an email provider that requires only the username to log in, such as Gmail, rather than one that requires the full email (and therefore use of the @ symbol), such as Hotmail.”

Dr Murnane said it is likely aged care facilities will face increasing pressure to introduce the internet in the next five to ten years, as they receive a growing number of computer-literate residents.

“Although making internet access available can be costly and resource-intensive for aged care facilities, I believe the benefits certainly outweigh the costs. They shouldn’t have to wait for residents to demand internet access; current residents deserve access now.”

http://www.education.unimelb.edu.au/