8.3.5 Provision of content

IP supports many new communications applications, however several types of applications that are used extensively in urban centres may not be first choice in rural and remote areas of countries where people have little formal education and low literacy rates. Sometimes, radio and television, along with voice communications, are more effective in spreading information to these populations than email or web pages.

In general, to have the greatest effect, content and applications specifically developed for rural areas need to consider the following requirements:

Tolerance of inadequate links in networks. In some locations or at some times, applications might need to use narrowband networks instead of broadband networks. The narrowband networks might have poor quality phone lines, or short wave radio transmissions that support email but not web access, as described in the Practice Note Short wave radio in the Solomon Islands.

Applications that can be used in these situations should minimize the data that is transferred across the Internet, by following guidance to make web pages compact [1]. Failing that, web pages can be read after removing graphics as demonstrated in the Practice Note The Loband web interface.
Distinctiveness from existing alternatives. Applications should offer more than what radio and television offers. Unless applications are informational alone, involving searching for and displaying information, they should be interactive; applications might allow users to play educational games, undergo health checks, complete forms or take part in tutorials and on-line tests. However, as stressed in Section 1.6.2 in the case of government applications, there needs to be careful planning and designing of these types of applications if they are to be widely used.
Acceptance of low levels of literacy. Applications should exploit the capabilities of ICT to avoid requiring high levels of literacy or knowledge of foreign languages. Typically, except where applications are designed for classroom use, they should provide spoken help messages and encourage spoken contributions to on-line forums. In fact, applications might be convergent; by exploiting multiple network technologies they could provide co-ordinated release and exchange of information in radio programmes and on-line forums.
Robustness. In many places, applications and other programs will have unskilled users or inexperienced system managers who must maintain the stability of the terminals from as far as possible. When problems occur (because of viruses, for example) or software is to be upgraded, local people must be able to maintain terminals through simple operations (e.g., typically just by restarting them).
Security. Security problems with applications on the Internet are so notorious that many people are willing to use more time-consuming and labour-intensive ways of doing business. These problems are discussed in the Information Technology Security Handbook and Cybersecurity Guide for Developing Countries.
Assistive design. The content should also be planned to eventually incorporate features that are appropriate for use by people with disabilities.