Introduction

Introduction

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EMMA

Disabled people, carers, volunteers and staff at Lead Scotland have worked hard to create a course which we hope you will find easy to understand. It can be a bit frightening at first, with any new learning, but stick with it. We’ve tried to break it into small steps, and keep practising over and over until you get that sweet spot, where you can move onto the next step.

There’s no doubt about it, it opens your world up and you won’t feel that you’re being left behind. One learner said, ‘my advice would be to find the courage and support to do it. Keep going with it and don’t give up.’

So good luck, and we really hope this course is useful to you. And tell us how you get on.

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Welcome to Everyday computer skills: a beginner’s guide to computers, tablets, mobile phones and accessibility. This course is designed to offer people with varying abilities the opportunity to keep up with present-day trends. It will provide practical guidance for developing basic and essential digital skills in an accessible way. The course has been coproduced by Lead Scotland staff, volunteers, learners and befriendees in partnership with The Open University in Scotland.

Lead Scotland is a voluntary organisation set up to empower disabled adults and young people, and carers across Scotland to access learning opportunities. Our organisation understands the barriers to learning essential digital skills experienced by disabled people and carers. So, with funding from the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations Digital Participation Charter, we have been able to partner with The Open University in Scotland to create this course.

We worked with 29 disabled people to coproduce the content of the course. All participants completed a questionnaire to identify digital skills they had or did not have. Each participant was asked to suggest and comment on specific content they would like to see in the course and express their interest in any further involvement with the course content. Nine of the participants were happy to be involved further. The outline of the course content was guided by the UK government’s ‘Essential digital skills framework’. Lead Scotland’s Learning Coordinator and four volunteers, three of whom have identified as disabled, each worked on specific sections to coproduce and complete the whole course.

Information about computer and digital technology is extensive, ever-growing and too vast to capture in the six lessons of this course. However, the course is intended to equip you with the basics and hopefully give you the skills and confidence to explore other freely available information. Once you gain confidence in accessing online resources, you will be able to fill any missing gaps that this course may have for you. There will be gaps, because computing devices come in all shapes and forms, and can function in different ways. As new technologies develop constantly, each of us is a learner, whether we are a beginner or specialist in any of the numerous computing fields.

Accessibility information

This course has been optimised for accessibility and should be compatible with assistive software. On a small mobile screen it may not yet be fully mobile responsive so you might need to use pinch and zoom to increase the size of text on screen. On a desktop or laptop computer, use Ctrl +/- to increase or reduce the size of text on screen as needed.

The course content is also available in a range of formats (Word, PDF, ebook) for you to study offline if you prefer. However, the system cannot track your progress through the downloaded versions. To update your progress bar, click through the online content pages of material you have studied offline. You can only attempt and submit the quizzes online.

Lead Scotland has worked with a range of partners to develop alternative formats of online safety and security messages for people who might otherwise find them inaccessible.

You can choose from a range of alternative formats and languages in the list below or download them directly from Lead Scotland. We will also include them on the resources page for the relevant sections.

Getting started

After studying this course, you should feel equipped with digital skills that are important to function in the modern world. You will be able to:

• Use a computer and make it more accessible.
• Create your own files using Microsoft Word.
• Send and receive messages via email, Facebook, Twitter and Skype.
• Access and search the internet securely.
• Use online services such as shopping and banking.
• Stay safe and legal online.

Do you consider yourself to be a complete beginner?

If you do, you may wish to go to the Additional information  section first before starting on Lesson 1. This section explores the various parts of a computer and explains how the internet works as well as how to search online.

Additional information is divided into four sections:

• Your computer hardware.

• Adjusting your set-up.

• How the internet works.

• Searching on the internet.

However, if you already feel confident on the basics, you can skip Additionational information and go straight to Lesson 1.

We hope that you enjoy the course and benefit from signing up to other free courses once you have the digital skills, confidence and trust to go online and connect!

Key words and concepts are in bold. There is a course glossary you can refer to if any of these are unfamiliar to you.

Let’s get started with Lesson 1.

Acknowledgements

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence.

The material acknowledged below is Proprietary and used under licence (not subject to Creative Commons Licence). Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this free course:

Every effort has been made to contact copyright owners. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.

Banner image: The Open University

Introduction video: Lead Scotland