2026 · Briefing · 2022–2026
We have not solved digital inequality
Sixteen years in, the claim we will defend is narrower than the claim we are sometimes offered.
We have not closed the gap between people who move comfortably through digital work and people who are still blocked at the door. Anyone who says otherwise is selling a different organisation.
What we have built is a coherent, evidence-based pathway. Raw access becomes usable capability. Usable capability becomes a qualification a stranger can recognise. Computing Literacy, Data Sense, and AI Fluency sit on that pathway as one continuum, examined at the candidate’s own computer, on camera, to a pass mark that has not been relaxed to make a year look kinder.
The pathway has been refined every year since 2010. Curricula move. The standard does not become a mood. Research keeps us specific about who is still outside, and charity work is how that specificity turns into a seat.
That is the work of the next years as well. More candidates, clearer evidence, and the same refusal to call a login a skill.