The field of Senior Citizens and information and communication technology (ICT) is a rather new field and there is not much published in this area yet. For many years the relationship between seniors and ICT has mainly been discussed in terms of how technology can be used to compensate for the impairments many old people have to face. In this volume, we take another point of departure. First of all, we do not understand Senior Citizens to be a homogeneous group where all people over a certain age are impaired, and in the need of help. Second, when the relationship between Senior Citizens and ICT is actually discussed, it is very often as a discussion of how helpers of the old people (nurses, home helpers, physicians and the like) can make use of ICT. Here, we focus on how the Senior Citizens themselves can utilize ICT. This change of the scope introduces a new theme into the debate raising new questions, in particular the question of how a digital divide, in which the Senior Citizens are excluded from the information society, can be reduced.
In this volume, older ICT users are identified just as several activities, provided by governments, non-profit organizations, and other actors, are analysed. Most of these activities are engaged in finding solutions to how the seniors learn to use the technology, and in improving their everyday life enhancing its quality.