With the aim of advancing the digital inclusion of senior citizens, the project’s objectives were the following: 1) Objective ("What are the problems?"): Against the backdrop of the digital divide affecting senior citizens, and given that very many seniors need to participate in some form of training to learn digital skills – yet many don’t, the first objective was to gather input on what is keeping seniors from acquiring digital skills via training by identifying so-called "implementation barriers". This was done by conducting a survey among seniors. 2) Objective ("What are possible solutions?"): The project obtained an overview of best practice models of digital education activities aimed at seniors that successfully address and overcome one or several of the implementation barriers identified through the survey. 3) Objective: The project intended to disseminate the project results as widely as possible among staff of adult education organisations, local authorities and associations for older people to ensure that the identified implementation barriers affecting the digital training of seniors can be adquately addressed by interested stakeholders.
The MADIS project addressed the need for targeted interventions that could tackle the clear lack of digital literacy among senior citizens who make up a rising percentage of the overall population. Digital literacy is becoming more and more essential for participating in social and cultural life, for promoting health, for autonomously taking care of everyday tasks and for combatting loneliness and alleviating isolation. This is vital for senior citizens with health or mental disabilities, who are homebound or have decreased mobility and special needs. Yet, while aiming to provide basic ICT and digital competency training for older adults, the adult education organisations involved in this project found that there are significant „implementation barriers“ that hinder them in providing useful interventions to tackle the lack of digital literacy among seniors. Therefore the MADIS project provided an overview of successful and transferable models of educational activities aimed at the digital inclusion of seniors that overcome these implementation barriers.