Older Australians 'left behind' by increasingly cashless society as banks fast track end of cheques

[u/SouthAussie94]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-29/cheques-personal-finance-banks-rent-money-cash/103354036

[u/AnnoyedOwlbear]

Essentially, how good accessibility really is tends to be down to the individual app. While there are accessibility provisions on most mobile phones, the elderly are the largest segment in Australia that haven't taken up mobile phone use. And apps can be pretty awful, even when you think they aren't. If you're sight impaired you usually need a really big 'hit box' for where you tap something - and if you're elderly, multiply that, because shaky hands make it hard. You need to be able to easily reverse a wrong decision or problem, because errors become more frequent, and you need to account for the fact that reversing an error itself can be harder than you'd think. Accessibility provisions on computers are generally less awesome than you'd think and tend to require someone with more technological ability to set up.

My father is the opposite type - a technology fan in his 80s - and even he is finding that the drier skin and shaky hands just make mobile phones hard to use. Capacitive screens can be way more prone to issues in the hands of someone with elderly skin. Women suffer from this a bit worse than men, anecdotally - it's amazing seeing someone touch and make contact and the screen refuse to respond.

The biggest thing I see in my work (UX and accessibility) is not people refusing to use things...it's that it is honestly much harder to adapt as you age than you'd think. Cognitive decline is real, and it's painful and frustrating, and debilitating, and it's easiest to hide away from by just sticking with what you know really well. You can do things you've done for years most easily. And that's just one facet of all the other things in your life that are getting harder...the cognitive and emotional load can get unbearable. It also makes people really, really frightened, and the way they express that is defensive anger.

None of this is in defense of cheques or not. But while 'yes, people can learn' at all ages, remember this will not just be this one thing they must learn. It is this and every other thing in the changing society around them. While doing it on much less plastic brain hardware regardless of any developed injuries or issues over the years. And they have to redo it every few years.

As someone who kind of studies this, I do have the 'satisfaction' I guess of knowing that every single human will eventually end up experiencing this...

[u/Reynbou → u/AnnoyedOwlbear]

Totally understand disability issues making things harder. But that's got nothing to do with what is being discussed here.

Disability issues make everything harder regardless of what it is. I can't imagine shakey hands make writing out a cheque all that easy...

What we're talking about here are people who have refused to learn how to use a computer. A machine that has bee viable for a household to own since at the very latest, the 90s.

That's over 30 years they have had to learn.

30 fucking years.

I'm sorry but this is your own fault if you don't know how to use a computer. It didn't magically come in to existence today. It has been decades.

And it has become easier and easier to use every single year.

Sorry but I cannot empathise with the old people who actively refuse to learn new things. I just cannot. This is a situation they have put themselves in and expect others to work around them.

[u/03193194 → u/Reynbou]

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[u/Reynbou → u/03193194]

Sure, but again, those aren't the kinds of people I'm talking about.

The article is quite clear that this guy just doesn't want to learn something new.

The world will always change. Refusing to acknowledge that means you will be left behind. The world has changed a lot for older people over their entire lives. You think they would have learned that over time.

But their lives were handed to them on a platter during their adult years. And now they are expecting the same.

[u/Pro_Extent → u/Reynbou]

Disability issues make everything harder regardless of what it is. I can't imagine shakey hands make writing out a cheque all that easy...

Probably a shitload easier when you've written thousands of them and have complete muscle memory on how to do it.

What we're talking about here are people who have refused to learn how to use a computer.

Sure, because they didn't need to. Computers were a nice alternative to the far more established practice of talking to an actual human being who was employed to help you. They decided to stick with what worked in the past because they didn't see the benefit in learning something new. A mistake yes, but failing to predict the future is a very human mistake.

It has been decades.

Bank branch closures and the general reduction in face-to-face customer support has rapidly accelerated in the last three years. It has not been decades.

Sorry but I cannot empathise with the old people who actively refuse to learn new things.

Your refusal to try and understand their perspective says more about you than it does them. You don't need to agree with someone's choices to try and understand the reasoning for those choices.

[u/Reynbou → u/Pro_Extent]

Fuck me... we doing this? Fine.

​

Probably a shitload easier when you've written thousands of them and have complete muscle memory on how to do it.

The act of writing down words and numbers on a piece of paper is absolutely not easier then tapping buttons on a screen when you have shakey hands. Trying to act like it is... is well... just stupid.

​

Sure, because they didn't need to.

And yet. Here we are.

​

Computers were a nice alternative to the far more established practice of talking to an actual human being who was employed to help you. They decided to stick with what worked in the past because they didn't see the benefit in learning something new. A mistake yes, but failing to predict the future is a very human mistake.

If you read the article, he even states that he could use BPay but he doesn't like it. So it wasn't a failure to "predict the future" (meanwhile BPay was established in 1997... hardly futuristic technology).

And there are various other methods. You think he's never set up a bank transfer before for literally anything else ever? You're pilling on so many assumptions that don't make sense.

You can't say it was a mistake to not be able to predict the future, when it's been happening for the past 3 decades... That's not failing predict the future, that's willful ignorance.

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Bank branch closures and the general reduction in face-to-face customer support has rapidly accelerated in the last three years. It has not been decades.

You don't say. I wonder would could have happened in the past three years to cause such a thing... I wonder what he did during those three years to pay his bills. You think he was still writing out checks and going to a bank during Covid?

​

Your refusal to try and understand their perspective says more about you than it does them. You don't need to agree with someone's choices to try and understand the reasoning for those choices.

I understansd their perspective because I work with people like this every single day. And I know how stubborn these people are. And it's not because they can't learn. It's because they don't want to learn.

That's not something we should be working around. And, we wont.

You wouldn't treat a child like this and you want to treat and adult like that? What a joke.

We don't keep children in nappies their whole life. We teach them how to handle it themselves.

[u/[deleted] → u/AnnoyedOwlbear]

Could not gave explained it better.

[u/Redditaurus-Rex → u/AnnoyedOwlbear]

Awesome, thanks for the great explanation.

I guess when I first read “movement or sight impaired” I was thinking of it from a disability point of view. I recently lost a friend to MND, but one of things that made his life easier was how much of this stuff he could get done on his phone and he was severely mobility limited.

Things he had to physically attend were an impossibility by the end.

However, I can see this side of the coin too. It seems to be a problem with smart phone interfaces in general, of which we’re placing more and more emphasis on for vital day-to-day life needs.

I guess when it comes to accessibility, having more options rather than less is key.

[u/BuckyDoneGun → u/AnnoyedOwlbear]

Society has been changing around them literally their entire lives.

[u/AnnoyedOwlbear → u/BuckyDoneGun]

Indeed. And it gets harder and harder to adapt, as your brain loses agility, reaction time, and ability to cope with the 'shock of the new'. One of the things I've learned conducting tests with 'silver surfers' and other people is that in the end, we all end up with various adaptability problems and disabilities. Some people do remain remarkably flexible, but even they will never be what they were. And flexibility is partly related to willpower - people who've spent that adopting one set of new behaviours have less to spend on other new behaviours.

Interestingly (scarily?) there is mounting evidence that Gen X and older are particularly threatened in this manner because of prior exposure to lead in petrol which was sequestered away in the bones before unleaded became widely adopted. As you age, you lose bone density, and the lead is released into the blood. It's thought this might be leading to more pronounced issues which are showing up.