In 2025, eight percent of Polish citizens had never used the internet, while only half possessed basic digital skills, highlighting persistent gaps in technological inclusion. <\/p>\n
The scale of primary digital exclusion in Poland, defined as the percentage of people who have never used the internet, stood at 8 percent in 2025. By comparison, this figure was 11 percent in 2021. Meanwhile, only 50 percent of individuals possessed at least basic digital skills last year.<\/p>\n
Digital exclusion, encompassing a lack of access, competence, and motivation to use information and communication technologies, carries serious psychological and social consequences. A lack of participation in an increasingly dominant digital world means not only restricted access to information or health services, but also a deepening sense of isolation, loneliness, and exclusion from social life.<\/p>\n
Deputy Minister of Digital Affairs Pawe\u0142 Olszewski, responding to a parliamentary interpellation, reported that 96 percent of households in Poland had access to the internet in 2025. Consequently, Poland ranked 9th among EU member states, where the average was 95 percent. For comparison, this indicator stood at 92 percent in 2021.<\/p>\n
Importantly, the differences in internet access between cities and rural areas have nearly vanished, with 96 percent of rural households and 97 percent of urban households having internet availability in 2025. Nearly all households with internet access utilized broadband connections (95 percent in 2025 and 92 percent of households in 2021).<\/p>\n
Despite the fact that 96 percent of households declare internet access, there are still individuals who have never used it. The scale of primary digital exclusion in Poland, understood as the percentage of the population that has never used the internet, was 11 percent in 2021 and 8 percent in 2025.<\/p>\n
However, the real problem is not primary digital exclusion, but competency-based digital exclusion. This is a situation where someone lacks the skills to use modern technologies, making daily functioning impossible.<\/p>\n
In 2025, the percentage of people with at least basic digital skills in Poland was 50 percent, which is 7 percentage points higher than in 2021. This allowed Poland to improve its position among EU member states by two places, reaching 23rd position.<\/p>\n
The Ministry of Digital Affairs admits that competency exclusion remains a key challenge affecting a significant part of society, particularly individuals with lower digital skills. One of the ways to address this problem is the Digital Competence Development Program, aimed at raising citizens’ digital skills by 2030.<\/p>\n
Perceptibility, operability, understandability, and robustness are the four main principles of digital accessibility requirements.<\/p>\n
The ministry also oversees the proper implementation of digital accessibility requirements for websites and mobile applications by public entities. “A lack of digital accessibility exposes people with disabilities and other users, including the elderly, to digital exclusion caused by their inability to use digital content that does not meet digital accessibility requirements,” points out Olszewski.<\/p>\n
The principles of website digital accessibility involve designing pages, applications, and documents in a way that is friendly to every user, including people with disabilities. They are based on four main pillars.<\/p>\n
We estimate the number of people who benefit from digital accessibility at 11 million, based on data from Statistics Poland (GUS) for 2024. Therefore, over 11 million people may be exposed to digital exclusion if websites and mobile applications fail to meet digital accessibility requirements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 2025, eight percent of Polish citizens had never used the internet, while only half possessed basic digital skills, highlighting persistent gaps in technological inclusion. Scale of Primary Digital Exclusion The scale of primary digital exclusion in Poland, defined as the percentage of people who have never used the internet, stood at 8 percent in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15861\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}