Not'appy The problem with digital societies

Increasingly, the world seems to run on smartphones-often to the exclusion of those who struggle with tech. What can be done?

- Andrew Anthony

Whatever the word for the opposite of heartwarming, it certainly applies to the story of Ruth and Peter Jaffe. The elderly couple from Ealing, west London, made headlines last month after being charged £110 ($140) by Ryanair for printing their tickets at Stansted airport.

Even allowing for the exorbitant cost of inkjet printer ink, 55 quid for each sheet of paper is a shockingly creative example of punitive pricing.

The Jaffes, aged 79 and 80, said they had become confused on the Ryanair website and accidentally printed out their return tickets instead of their outbound ones to Bergerac. It was the kind of error anyone could make, although octogenarians, many of whom struggle with the tech demands of digitalisation, are far more likely to make it.

But as the company explained in a characteristically charmless justification of the charge: "We regret that these passengers ignored their email reminder and failed to check-in online."

Leaving aside the "sorry, not sorry" expression of regret, the presumption is that elderly people remain vigilant to every missive that arrives from the online world. In fact, many find it a tangled onslaught of scams, junk mail, endless passwords and security risks into which they venture as little as possible.

The plight of the Jaffes is emblematic of a larger problem that is confronting those not fully plugged into modern systems of business. Citing the couple, the historian and TV presenter Amanda Vickery tweeted that "most car parks now don't take cash, ticket offices are disappearing. If you are not tech-savvy you are toast. It is so exclusionary."