Free online learning for older people & tech newbies for using online tools. Australia-centric.

Build your digital skills, confidence and safety online with our free learning content and computer classes.

Includes iPhone lesson plan for beginners, Android lesson plan for beginners, "Apps to make everyday life easier", using the MyGov app, using Google PassKeys and more. These are Australia-centric, but easily adapted to other countries. These are good guides for creating your own lessons for seniors and others new to tech in your own region.

Be Connected. Every Australian Online.

Keywords: Tech4Good, Apps4Good, Civic Technology, Civic Tech, causes, community, altruism, philanthropy, philanthropic, mission, helping others.

After the 2025 Kerrville, Texas floods and Los Angeles wildfires, KABOOM! needed to quickly support communities by identifying damaged playgrounds. In this 15-minute talk from #SOTMUS2026 (video) and Open Street Map, learn about a GIS workflow that helps communities and partners prioritize which sites need attention first using transparent, replicable criteria.

Rapid Disaster Mapping for Playgrounds: Turning Geospatial Data into Recovery Priorities ~ Alice Lee.

KABOOM! is a nonprofit organization that has built or improved 17,000+ playspaces, engaged more than 1.5 million community members and brought joy to nearly 12 million kids. 

The UC Berkeley Cybersecurity Clinic and Fight for the Future collaborated to create a guide aimed at enhancing the cybersecurity practices of mutual aid organizations. Released as part of the CLTC White Paper Series, the guide — Securing Mutual Aid: Cybersecurity Practices and Design Principles for Financial Technology — outlines best practices to help mutual aids use financial technology, enhance their cybersecurity, and design secure digital platforms.

Lots more about this and other resources here.

Key Takeaways for Mutual Aid Organizers

The report includes several recommendations for mutual aid organizers to enhance their cybersecurity posture based on current practices, including:

Limit personal information on accounts. Mutual aids should avoid linking members’ personal bank accounts, credit cards, or personal information (like phone numbers or names) to accounts on payment platforms such as PayPal or Venmo. Instead of using personal payment accounts, consider using a dedicated account that is not directly tied to any specific member’s personal information, like a business/organization account, or obtaining a phone for treasurer duties.

Be aware of deplatforming. Deplatforming, when an account or its functions are temporarily or permanently banned by a technology platform, is a common experience for mutual aids, and is often done without reason or explanation. Organizations should diversify their technology platforms to avoid relying on one service.

Prioritize using privacy-centered services and understanding privacy settings. Mutual aids often rely on Big Tech platforms, like Meta’s WhatsApp and Google. Our report provides recommendations for harm reduction techniques for organizations relying on Big Tech platforms, and also outlines more private secure alternatives if a mutual aid is interested in migrating. For all platforms, mutual aids should tailor settings for better security, for example by implementing multi-factor authentication.

Establish policies for data retention, communication, and other areas to enhance cybersecurity posture. Mutual aids can establish policies and guidelines for how sensitive and non-sensitive information is communicated, and more broadly how data is stored and retained. Minimizing the amount of data that is collected and stored will better protect the organization.

Keywords: Tech4Good, Apps4Good, Civic Technology, Civic Tech, causes, community, altruism, philanthropy, philanthropic, mission, helping others.

This month, MS Publisher users joined the millions of users who have been abandoned – or forced into what the Document Foundation calls "a completely unjustified update" – by Microsoft over the years, alongside those using Office LTSC 2021 and Office 2021.

Consequently, anyone who has purchased a Microsoft 365 subscription will no longer be able to open their PUB files.

For millions of schools, parishes, associations, small businesses and local authorities, this is a major problem. For over thirty years, they have been producing newsletters, leaflets, programmes, posters and calendars using Publisher...

Publisher’s PUB format is not an open standard, so the developers working on the Document Liberation Project have reverse-engineered it and created the libmspub library, which is used by LibreOffice and Scribus to import Publisher files. This is to enable MS Publisher users to continue reading their own documents regardless of Microsoft’s decisions.

This means it is possible to open PUB files using free software and save them in the OpenDocument Format (ODF), the only standard, open format for office documents, which is not dependent on any single application or company. Alternatively, they can be opened with Scribus, which is open-source desktop publishing software, but does not use a standard document format...

If you are responsible for documents in a public sector organisation, a school or an association, now is the time to check whether your file format is proprietary and dependent on a single vendor’s application, so that you can plan the transition to an open standard format whilst it is still possible to open them.

The LibreOffice community is here to help you.

Original blog.

Hi everyone!

My name is Matthew Lashway. I’m a power wheelchair user with cerebral palsy, and I’ve been developing accessible digital tools intended to make everyday organization and independent living a little easier.

I created Grocery Buddy, a free Excel-based grocery-planning workbook. It is designed for anyone who wants a more organized way to manage grocery shopping, including disabled people, families, seniors, caregivers, and budget-conscious shoppers.

The workbook includes tools for:

• Creating and organizing grocery lists

• Tracking pantry inventory and low-stock items

• Saving favorite products and preferred brands

• Reusing frequently purchased items

• Recording and comparing grocery prices

• Tracking grocery expenses

• Preparing a simplified shopper view

The workbook does not connect to retailers, collect personal information, or provide live prices. Prices and shopping information are entered manually in each person’s own copy.

It is completely free. No payment, donation, subscription, email address, or signup is required.

View or download Grocery Buddy here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PnC4f43Bp73RwZpc-SLk0n6LMvpD1GsM/edit

The shared original is protected so everyone can download and use a separate copy.

I created it with accessibility and everyday independence in mind, although spreadsheet applications can differ in their accessibility and feature support.

Constructive feedback about usability and accessibility would be welcome. I’m also interested in hearing how practical, low-cost technology can better support independent living.

Created and shared by Matthew Lashway

From a post on Mastodon on September 8, 2026:

Today, I'm releasing a new website for blind gamers, built for 2026 and beyond.

So much of the information about blind-accessible PC and console games is scattered across the AudioGames.net forum, GitHub pages, Discord servers, and websites that haven't kept up with how quickly blind gaming has been evolving since the advent of AI. Unless you're embedded in Discord or the Audiogames.net Forum, you're probably not aware that over 70 games have been made accessible for the blind via modding this year alone.

What we've really needed is a website that tracks accessible mainstream games, with descriptions, direct links to their mods, and the information you need to get playing. "But that's a wiki," you exclaim. "But there are already lists like this," you plead. Well...

BlindGaming.net, aka The Blind Gaming Database, automatically tracks mod releases through GitHub and Nexus Mods. It also tracks game prices across Steam, GOG, Humble, and many key shops, with a genre filter and a page for ongoing sales. And for the nerds among us, each game has its own RSS feed and supports web push notifications. There are a lot of other small features, like cross-region price history, and an upcoming API for mod ratings and game access information. I also want to do a better job of raising up mod creators so people know how to support them!

All of this said, there's still much work to be done. If you'd like to help, consider writing a guide in Markdown or improving the existing Steam guide. I'd especially appreciate help from anyone familiar with console or Linux setup, so we can give people instructions they can actually follow. Finally, if you're interested in helping maintain the registry of games and have a track record in doing this kind of work, please shoot me a DM.

This is not intended as a replacement for places like the Accessible Gaming wiki, although I do my best to integrate with it and point people there when I can.

I'd love to hear what you think!

https://www.blindgaming.net/

"The unofficial slogan of the tech and AI industry is bigger, faster, better. I would rather advocate for smarter, kinder, wiser." —Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, at the Global Dialogue on AI.

Thematic discussion 3: Safe, secure and trustworthy AI - Global Dialogue on Artificial Intelligence Governance - Day 2. 07 Jul 2026.

Summary

Safe, secure and trustworthy AI: interoperability and compatibility of approaches  - 4(a) the development of safe, secure and trustworthy AI systems; 4(d) the interoperability and compatibility of artificial intelligence governance approaches.

Video Length 02:54:58.

Keywords: Tech4Good, Apps4Good, Civic Technology, Civic Tech, causes, community, altruism, philanthropy, philanthropic, mission, helping others, ethics.

Impact Net Foundation in the town of Veles, North Macedonia, initiated a series of city walks, involving young people of the town.  The purpose of these urban walks is to assess and collect information about the accessibility of public institutions in Veles. During these walks, young participants will have a possibility to observe, research, and record what levels of accessibility public institutions in Veles have. 

The NGO designed three levels by which public institutions will be graded. These are: green – accessible and welcoming for everyone; yellow – partially accessible, with improvements needed, and red – significant barriers that exclude citizens. 

By doing this grading, young people would learn to see how urban spaces can be better designed for people who do not always have full capacity to access those.  

Call for Proposals for Knowbility's John Slatin AccessU 2027 conference is now open.

The Call for Proposals for Knowbility's John Slatin AccessU 2027 conference is now open.

AccessU is a premier, hands-on skills training conference for digital accessibility, and we invite you to share your expertise with our community.

Pre-Conference Workshops: Tuesday, May 11, 2027

General Sessions: Wednesday, May 12 – Friday, May 14, 2027

Location: St. Edward's University, Austin, Texas (all sessions in person)

Submission Guidelines and Tracks:

The conference eight tracks are Development, Testing, Design and User Experience, Documents and Templates, AI and Emerging Technologies, Policy and Strategy, Marketing and Communication, and Advocacy.

You won't choose one on the form; our review committee will place your session where it fits best.

Available Session Formats:

Pre-Conference Workshop: 6–8 hours

General Session: 180 minutes (at least 45 minutes for practice and Q&A)

General Session: 90 minutes (at least 30 minutes for practice and Q&A)

Key Deadlines and Submission:

The deadline for all submissions is final.

You are encouraged to submit your proposals well in advance of the cutoff date.

Submit by November 30, 2026 (deadline is final):

Submit Your Proposal Here

Questions? Contact [accessu@knowbility.org](mailto:accessu@knowbility.org)

Knowbility, Inc. is a nonprofit organization based in Austin, Texas and an award-winning leader in accessible information technology. Its mission is to create an inclusive digital world for people with disabilities.

Accessibility is a team sport, together we can create an inclusive digital world for people with disabilities.

iVolunteer is a volunteer matching web site serving India. It describes itself as "a social enterprise that promotes volunteering with the mission to bring volunteers and organizations together to share time, skills, and passion to promote India’s social development."

Aarti Mahadevan is a Principal Consultant iVolunteer and is based in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. In a recent LinkedIn post, she wrote regarding iVolunteer, that they hosted employees of an analytics company based in Gurgaon, who donated their time to run a 2 hour tech session with 30 iVolunteer volunteers.

The outcome - higher level of satisfaction among the volunteers but more importantly volunteers worked in smaller groups with 19 NGO representatives specifically teaching them how to improve analytics and insights from their own dashboards , one on one and how to use AI to create smarter presentations and reports . In our feedback from the NGOS, the response was really positive with their wanting to continue to engage volunteers going forward ( a bigger win) as well as finding smarter ways to work on their dashboards. All those who applied to participate turned up :-)

Another unit of theirs with a smaller number of employees had near 100% participation in creating teaching materials as the facilitators described who will use them , why they will create an impact and what outcomes one might expect.

It's a nice example of Tech4Good volunteering.

Join OZeWAI for its next Ask the Professionals session on Thursday 15 October 2026 from 6-7:30pm AEDT (UTC+11).

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) play an important role in accessibility, and understanding how success criteria and conformance work in practice helps teams make informed decisions.

The next Ask the Professionals session brings together three globally recognised accessibility experts to explore WCAG through real examples, practical guidance and thoughtful discussion.

Join Patrick H. Lauke (TetraLogical), Eric Eggert (Web Accessibility Specialist), and Sarah Pulis (Intopia), specialists who contribute directly to W3C standards, accessibility education and inclusive design, for a conversation about applying WCAG with clarity and confidence.

Date: 15 October 2026
Time: 6-7:30pm AEDT (UTC+11)
Format: Online (Zoom)
Cost: Free

Moderated by Gian Wild (AccessibilityOz), a long‑time leader in web accessibility.

OZeWAI is the professional association for digital accessibility specialists and organisations in Australia.

Register now.

“Wikimedia’s volunteers are the ones who come in first contact with, and clean up the mess left behind by AI agents. ... Wikimedia’s volunteers have stayed resilient so far in tackling emerging challenges on our platforms, but we also want to say: it doesn’t need to be this way.”

More from Wikipedia.

IBM says that:

Artificial intelligence (AI) is technology that enables computers and machines to simulate human learning, comprehension, problem solving, decision making, creativity and autonomy.

You have probably also heard the term generative AI:

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is a type of AI that creates "original" content, such as text, images, audio, video, and code, in response to user prompts.

I have "original" in quotes because the reality is that all AI training comes from the work of humans, and in the vast majority of cases, the humans that wrote the text, drew the images, or created the video, song, sound, or code were in no way compensated by the company that built the AI.

This page of resources for nonprofits, NGOs, mission-based organizations and others regarding AI is not a list of AI tools - there are plenty of people and companies out there doing that already. Instead, this is a list of things nonprofits and other mission-based programs should do, and shouldn't do, with AI, and the bases for that advice.

In summary: I believe that AI should be used in such a ways as to NOT erode one of the biggest strengths of a nonprofit: its humanness. I believe that AI should be leveraged in a way that doesn't undermine a nonprofit's integrity or authenticity, nor human originality.

Before you start considering any AI tools, you need to consider the issues presented on this page - otherwise, you won't be making fully-informed decisions, you won't be asking the right questions when a funder is trying to pressure you to adopt AI, and you may be replacing authentic, human presentations at a time when authentic human-to-human connections have never been needed more. I have no doubt that there is going to be disagreement on what I am proposing here.

Your thoughts?

If you want to reach a younger demographic regarding your volunteering opportunities, your awareness messages, your data that shows your value to the community and more, you need to build posts to Reddit into your marketing strategy, no matter what your nonprofit's size or focus. 

In addition, posting to Reddit, and always using your organization's name in your post and a link to your web site with relevant information, will improve your web sites SEO (Search Engine Optimization) - in other words, increasing the number of people that can find your web site and will visit it.

This Guide for nonprofits, NGOs, charities and others to leverage Reddit has been updated.

Keywords: Tech4Good, Reddit4Good, online communities, community-building, reputation

Senior citizens attended a free technology support event in May to help older adults feel more confident using everyday devices. Hosted by Senior AI Education, the “Bring Your Device” event took place on May 15 at the Flint Public Library.

The hands-on session encouraged attendees to bring smartphones, tablets, or laptops to receive live assistance from technology professionals. Support was available for a variety of common tech concerns, including device settings, email access, passwords, apps, internet questions, and understanding artificial intelligence tools.

The event is designed to create a welcoming environment where seniors can ask questions and receive one-on-one guidance without feeling intimidated by rapidly changing technology.

https://flintside.com/flint-seniors-technology-help/

Facing a federal funding denial, a University of California - Los Angeles (UCLA) research group has turned to OnlyFans to raise money and bring awareness to long-term research funding difficulties.

The Blumstein Lab, which studies marmot behavior, started videos of the large rodents on OnlyFans – a subscription-based adult entertainment content creation platform – under the name “OnlyMarms” after the National Science Foundation rejected the researchers’ proposals to renew their grant. The researchers have received thousands of dollars in donations and subscription money since launching the account.

More from the Daily Bruin.

(never thought about OnlyFans being used as Tech4Good, but here we are).

How to become a moderator of Tech4Good

• Post an on-topic comment or post at least twice a month
• Have at least 25 post karma points
• Have at least 25 comment karma points
• Have your Reddit profile set to public (meaning anyone can see all of your posts and comments on Reddit)

Mods need to be

• committed to the mission of this subreddit
• want to help people
• know how to moderate an online community or be interested in learning how
• be willing to learn about how to use Reddit mod tools if they don't know already
• not wanting to change the focus of this subreddit

If you meet these requirements and are interested in being a mod, please contact the mods.

It takes about 30 minutes a week to be a mod of Tech4Good - just a few minutes a day, or every other day. The main role of the mod is to keep off off-topic posts and posts or comments that violate the rules.

You do NOT have to be a mod to report a post or comment for violating rules.

Financial apps for young people aren't just to manage money - they are also ways young people can learn about money through really short videos, games or quizzes. Some have tools for tying allowances to chores. Some have features regarding savings goals.

Most financial apps are subscription based, and charge by the month. Most that target people under 18 require a joint or custodial account prior to the age of 18. This means that kids can make some decisions, but most transactions require parental approval. 

Here are articles that discuss some options for young people in the USA:

Financial Apps for Kids and Teens from Pennian Bank.

The Best Kids’ Finance Apps to Teach Money Management from the Pentagon Federal Credit Union.

10 Best Banking Apps and Debit Cards for Kids and Teens from Nerd Wallet.

An app called Greenlight gets a lot of attention - but is that because it's the best or the one with the best marketing?

If you are or someone in your life uses such an app, feel free to share about the experience here.

Developed in a ‘bubble’, many apps that were developed by various IT dogooders for refugees duplicated existing well-used communication platforms. They didn’t take into account complex issues of trust, how information (or rumors) spread, nor how rapidly the political and protection landscape changed. There was also demonstrated naivety around data protection and the political sensitivity related to information being shared.

“I definitely don’t want to disparage the motivations nor the commitments demonstrated by thousands of volunteers during in Europe. But, ‘tech-led solutions’ to complex challenges failed to solve the significant communication issues.”

Katie Drew of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) writes a much-needed piece about the many apps4good / tech4good efforts launched to help migrants that didn’t last past their splashy launches. She also provides helpful advice for future efforts. Her advice is applicable to ANY hackathons / hacks4good that think a room full of IT folks can solve an issue faced by migrants, people experiencing homeless, women facing domestic violence, or any mission of a nonprofit or non-governmental organization.

Note: ALL of the links are broken to this article now (they still show up in Google searches, but then go to 404 pages). To access the article, go to archive.org - I found it here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20180718183133/https://www.unhcr.org/innovation/whose-innovation-is-it-anyway/

What are your thoughts?

Keywords: Tech4Good, Apps4Good, Civic Technology, Civic Tech, causes, community, altruism, philanthropy, philanthropic, mission, helping others, ethics.

United Nations ICT4D Initiatives
Various United Nations offices have launched initiatives to promote the use of computers, feature phones, smart phones and various networked devices in development and humanitarian activities, to promote digital literacy and equitable access to the "information society," and to bridge the digital divide. This web page is my effort to track UN Tech4Good / ICT4D programs, from the oldest through 2016. My goal is to primarily to help researchers, as well as to remind current UN initiatives that much work regarding ICT4D has been done by various UN employees, consultants and volunteers for more than 15 years (and perhaps longer?).

Did you work on a UN ICT4D or Tech4Good initiative? Or are you working on one now? Share your experience here.