Accessibility and assisted digital

Assisted digital support: an introduction

You must make sure everyone who needs your service can use it.

Sometimes users will need help to use your service online. This known as ‘assisted digital support’.

Any user may need assisted digital support, if they lack:

  • trust in your service or the internet
  • confidence to use an online service themselves
  • access to the internet
  • digital skills
  • motivation to overcome these barriers on their own

You can provide this support over the phone or in person. Sometimes webchat will be appropriate too.

How to provide assisted digital support

You can use existing capacity in your organisation or hire private, voluntary or other public sector organisations to provide support for you.

Decide this when you design your assisted digital support.

Researching users’ assisted digital needs

You must do user research to understand what help people need to use your service online.

Users you don’t have to support

You don’t have to provide assisted digital support for users who:

  • work in the public sector and use your service as part of their work (including contractors)
  • are overseas and not British citizens
  • are not the end user (for example accountants helping end users with a tax service, or a car sales business helping end users pay road tax)

Services where no users need support

If you think your service has no users who need assisted digital support, you need to be able to explain how your user research and testing support this.

Last update:

Added low trust, self-confidence and motivation to list of reasons users may need assisted digital support.

  1. Guidance first published