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How can we help your life online?

September 12, 2022

5 minutes

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We want to help build digital skills and confidence for those people using the Phoenix Life website so that you find it helpful and easy to use.

There are lots of things to build digital skills. It’s not just about having access to the internet, it’s also about having the skills to use it, the confidence to know where to start, to find content that’s relevant and helpful to you - and most importantly to feel safe when you go online.

Building your confidence online

There are many ways to support our customers through their digital user journey with Phoenix Life.

Whether you want to improve your digital skills or you’re the expert that family and friends turn to for help, we’ve created free resources to offer support and guidance in using digital technology and staying safe online.

Digital essentials

For our customers who want to build confidence online we’ve developed a series of videos and guides called our Digital Essentials. The videos concentrate on the key skills everyone needs to build digital confidence, to make the most of technology and stay safe online.

The first video Digital skills and understanding explains how we can help with using computer technology and searching on the internet.

It can feel like a separate digital world with its own language and rules.

Understanding this digital world is about so much more than just understanding how a single piece of technology works, like a laptop or a smartphone.

For example, you might be comfortable using a computer for your job, but using one at home might feel completely different.

You might have had to upgrade your existing technology and the replacement feels much more complicated.

You may have very little digital experience at all.

The point is it's natural to find this overwhelming or even a bit scary, because it can be, whether you were born into the Digital Age or are just trying to get to grips with it later in life.

It also holds a lot of potential for you to unlock.

Part of what makes the digital world, particularly the internet, so overwhelming is its sheer size.

Where do you even start when there are almost two billion, and counting, websites to choose from?

Maybe a good way to think about the internet is to imagine it as a country, full of its own unique cities, towns, villages, as well as its own regional dialects.

You wouldn't expect to visit every part of a country.

Instead you'd find the place you liked and begin exploring from there.

Just like any country, there are bad and good parts, and dangerous and safe places on the internet.

The key is equipping ourselves with the tools and knowledge to ensure that we can travel through this country safely, do the things we enjoy, and explore the things that interest us.

Such as doing your weekly online grocery shopping, learning new languages, staying in touch with people or booking a trip.

Our goal is to help you understand the digital world a little bit better, offering you some support to make things seem a little less complex and, with any luck, a little less overwhelming.

We're building a series of information guides which we hope will help you to become more confident using digital technologies and make the most of the online information that's available to you.

We'll be looking at how to use certain digital and online features, how to keep yourself safe and the things you can check if it's not quite working as expected.

If you find this useful, or know someone who might, feel free to share this with family and friends.

Are you ready to grow your digital knowledge?

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The series of Digital Essentials videos also includes Getting started - a quick look at the key things you need to know before you get started - and Staying safe and up to date which explains how you can stay safe and secure when you’re online.

You can access the videos and all guidance material at our Phoenix Group website.

We’d love to hear what you think

We’d love to hear any suggestions and ideas you think would be useful to people just starting their digital journey, or how we can improve on what we’ve done already. It’s quick and easy to leave us feedback.

How does what Phoenix Life is doing fit into the bigger picture?

We thought we’d share some information about digital literacy and digital inclusion so you can see how our work fits into the bigger picture of what other organisations are doing about digital literacy.

The Government Digital Service created a digital inclusion scale that maps people’s digital capability on a scale from 1 to 9, from those who don’t use the internet at all to digital experts. Government Digital Inclusion Strategy - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Each year the Good Things Foundation publishes a Digital Nation infographic (Building a Digital Nation - Good Things Foundation) showing who's digitally excluded in the UK and the reasons why they are not online.

Website accessibility

Once you’re on our website we want to make it as easy to use as possible. Here’s the accessibility tools that are available to help Accessibility

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