The Blueprint for Equitable Digital Participation

The Blueprint for Equitable Digital Participation was designed to center the lived experiences of those directly impacted by digital inequities. Participants provided recommendations that ultimately pass the ‘kitchen table’ test—policies needed to help people live with dignity, opportunity, and the ability to thrive—for how to solve the digital divide in low-to-moderate-income households across America. Key takeaways include: 

• Consumers possess a sophisticated understanding of solutions needed to bridge the digital divide, but they face systemic barriers due to policies that prioritize concentrated wealth over community needs. 
• The digital divide compounds every other challenge struggling households already face. Communities do not face barriers to broadband access and adoption in isolation. Instead, these obstacles intersect with challenges with housing stability, healthcare, employment, and education, which makes it imperative that these issues are addressed in concert with the closing of the digital divide.
• Past policy approaches to closing the digital divide have failed to center community wisdom. Effective solutions meet people where they are so they are empowered to strengthen grassroots solutions, such as by embedding digital resources in frequently visited places or integrating digital navigation programs in existing areas of community support to meet their needs.
• The Universal Service Fund must be urgently reformed to provide a robust broadband affordability benefit of approximately $40 (or more if someone is in a high-cost area or living on Tribal lands) that reflects the market costs and the reality of competing costs of household expenses.