Case Study: Online Content for Low-Income and
Other
Underserved Americans
Mission
While the Internet transforms the nature of opportunity in the
workplace, schools, and society, millions of low-income and other
underserved families and young people are not able to benefit from the
digital revolution because they lack adequate access to computers and
the Internet and/or to the content and skills to use them
effectively.
The goal of the program is to make sure
that digital opportunities extend to all young people and their
communities, particularly those who are low income and
underserved.
Background
From 1996 until 2000, The Children’s Partnership had been working
to help accelerate the diffusion of technology into low-income
neighborhoods, through a 4-year, $6 million project called Computers in Our Future,
funded by The
California Wellness Foundation. The goal was to work at a very local
level to help close the Digital Divide between those that have access to
computers and those who do not. The project was designed to provide
computers, the Internet, and quality instruction, and to help
communities define how best to deploy them for the health and benefit of
their residents. More than 25,000 young people participated over 4
years.
Problem to Solve
The Computers in our Future project included 11 community
technology centers located in neighborhoods throughout California, ranging from an Indian reservation on
the Oregon border to a city on the Mexican
border. As the project developed, bringing computers, Internet
connections, and quality training to low-income residents, we began to
hear of a new aspect of the Digital Divide--even when community members
were able to use the Internet, they couldn’t find the
online information or applications they needed.
Proposed Solution
Since we discovered this “content gap,” our
first step was to undertake the research to understand the extent of
this gap and describe what content was needed.
The Children’s Partnership invested nine months
of research including focus groups with low-income Internet users across
the country, interviews with community technology leaders, an
independent analysis of more than 1,000 Web sites, and a review of
relevant research and literature.
The research was released in Online
Content for Low-income and Underserved Americans, The Digital
Divide’s New Frontier, in March of 2000. It is a
Strategic Audit, an analytic tool developed by The Children’s
Partnership to survey and analyze a broad field undergoing significant
changes. The Audit is designed to look at emerging issues in order to
understand the nature of the problem and to identify recommendations for
action that can enable policy-makers, community practitioners, and
private-sector developers to become part of the solution.
Findings included: At least 50
million Americans--roughly 20%--face one or more content-related
barriers that stand between them and the benefits offered by the
Internet.
Barriers include:
- Lack of relevant, practical, highly local information
such as neighborhood-level job, housing, child care, and transportation
items;
- Lack of information written at a basic literacy
level;
- Lack of information for non-English or limited
English-speaking Internet users; and
- Lack of information that was created in a culturally
relevant manner.
After the release of this report (with coverage in The
New York Times, USA Today, and many other print, online, and radio
publications), The Children’s Partnership followed-up
with:
- The launch of Contentbank.org, an online clearinghouse and
resource for online content for underserved communities;
- Online
Content for Low-Income and Underserved Communties, an
issue update published in 2002;
- The
Search for High-Quality Online Content for Low-Income and Underserved
Communities: Evaluating and Producing What's Needed (October 2003),
a report which included Guidelines for evaluating online content;
and
- Contentbank Newsblast, a weekly online news service
that tracks news and information about online content that impacts
low-income communities, launched in 2002.
In addition, we conducted a broad outreach program
online, in print, in the media, and through speaking
engagements.
Core questions
Is this issue a critical one?
Advocacy to ensure that the digital economy
and society includes low-income, disabled, and other underserved
communities is crucial since there is a persistent gap between those who
have access to the technology and skills to use it and those who do
not.
Timing is especially important as the Internet and
related technologies increasingly become the standard way of doing
business and accessing opportunities for learning, jobs, health
information, etc. The Children’s Partnership’s
research and subsequent activities helped define what was needed and
then spurred many groups to focus on needed content which addresses
the “content barriers” listed above.
For example, One Economy, a
nonprofit organization focused on bringing high-speed Internet into
low-income housing, has developed The Beehive, using, in part, The
Children’s Partnership's research as a guide for content
development.
Could our change model deliver a direct and
tangible service to significant numbers of families and young
people?
Yes, in a direct way through our online resource Contentbank.org, we
evaluated a substantial amount of relevant quality information on the
Web that could directly benefit a low-income community member. While
Contentbank.org is directed toward librarians, community technology
program staffers, and other “intermediaries,” the Web
information is for both staffers and community members. Our content also
demonstrates what “quality” looks like and allows others to
emulate these excellent sites.
Contentbank and our continuing research on content
evaluation and creation has directly helped others develop content for
underserved communities.
One example is First Find, a Web
site developed by a group of libraries in New York.
This Web resource set out to be the premiere public library example of
finding and evaluating content that was relevant and accessible to
low-income users as described in The Children’s
Partnership’s research. First Find has been presented to the
entire American
Library Association to serve as a working model.
Could our change model be taken to scale?
The change model for this project was one of leveraging the findings
from our Strategic Audit and other research to help others develop
content at the local level. For example, as e-government becomes
more and more prevalent, the content needs to be relevant and accessible
by all those who use it. The State and Federal
E-Government report, issued annually by Darrell West
at Brown
University, started
out to measure the extent and effectiveness of e-government Web
sites. In 2004 he added criteria for content including
readability and accessibility for those with
disabilities.
Is our model sustainable?
This program is not meant to be sustained in a static form. This
model of change is based on using top quality research to define areas
of need that are developing in the digital age, and to leverage our
research and online resources to focus public and private resources on
addressing the need for online content for underserved communittes. As
the community technology field has grown, and as more and more content
for underserved communities has come online, the program will transform
itself to the next threshold question to be answered in order to
continue advocating for digital opportunities for all young
people.
Is this change model a new contribution?
The online content project opened up a new area of advocacy at a
critical juncture in the unfolding of the Internet. This research
marked the first comprehensive look at the “content gap” and
helped fuel understanding and action around this issue in communities
across the country.
Will this model help develop new, influential
constituencies that could help serve the long-term goal of access to
technology for all children (and possibly beyond)?
We are delighted that The Children’s Partnership has been
contacted and has worked with a number of partners and entities involved
in online content development, including those from both the private and
public sectors.
Does this change model help build public will?
This project builds an awareness that public,
private, and nonprofit entities must develop content that serves a wide
range of audience, and the research provides the basis and guidelines to
do so.
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