World Usability Day: “One inmate didn’t know how to use the cursor”

Prison tech expert James Tweed calls for digital skills to be made a human right

A prison education expert has called for urgent change to prevent a digital divide and reduce crime and inequality.

King’s award-winning entrepreneur James Tweed said having digital skills and being able to access online services is now a human right.

With the 20th World Usability Day taking place on Thursday (November 14) Tweed says he supports the organisation’s goal to make technology accessible to all.

Tweed said: “Gaining digital skills can transform lives and we see it happening every day. Making it easier for those at the fringes of society to take part in today’s digital landscape makes a big difference.

“From accessing benefits to finding accommodation and work, to simply contacting the people close to them, being able to use digital technologies effectively is now make or break for many of the people we work with.”

Tweed is the founder and CEO of Cambridge-based digital learning company Coracle, which provides inmates in 91 prisons in England and Wales with laptops they can use in their cells.

In April 2023, Coracle won a King’s Award for Enterprise for promoting opportunity. But Tweed said the many of his experiences of educating prisoners show just how severe the digital divide has become.

“I remember one inmate who was struggling to access the courses available on his laptop. It turned out he didn’t know how to use the cursor.

“There are so many little things most of us now take for granted, but if you’d been separated from society for decades you simply wouldn’t know how to do them.”

Tweed highlighted the importance of reducing reoffending, which the Ministry of Justice estimates at costing £18.5bn annually.

“When we are looking for ways to prevent re-offending, digital skills and usable technologies are a huge priority,” he noted.

“If we can design technologies that are usable for those coming out of the prison system then we will have a better world, with reduced reoffending, which currently costs the British taxpayer over £18bn a year.”

World Usability Day, also known as ‘Make Things Easier Day’, falls on Thursday November 14th and the theme for 2024 is ‘Designing For A Better World’.

World Usability Day occurs annually to promote the values of usability, usability engineering, user-centered design, universal usability, and every user’s responsibility to ask for things that work better. The day adopts a different theme each year.

The event was established in 2005 by the Usability Professionals Association, now the User Experience Professionals Association.