To be fair, the majority of people can barely resize an image, let alone take a good quality clear photo, convert it to pdf, and then have the knowledge of online fax being possible.
There are still people who that won’t help, but positive mental attitude goes a long way.
Being a consumer is far different than being a creator/manipulator of content.
We do it natively in our day so much we forget that there are many that don't participate in the world like this. They probably would, if they had the chance to learn.
But yes, most people can send an image on Facebook (with some coaching), so they can learn to send an image to a fax service.
What often confused these things is that people will type "send a fax" on Google, and then install the first thing recommended - those recommendations are based on 'making most profit for $company & Google' and so are often not the best system and often charge a lot c for basic services (with all the usual dark patterns).
https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/FT_19...
Also, many of the people who don't use the internet also don't have access to fax machines or mailbox service either (homeless, very rural), so they aren't harmed by internet replacement for those.
From the full pew survey, the strongest correlations were education and age... and only 19% of those who didn’t have the internet said it was because they couldn’t afford it.
Given that the demographics of people who don’t have the internet overlap very significantly with those who need benefits the most, I can’t help but think that moving public services to online-only might be a bit of an out-of-touch solution.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/22/some-americ...
I think the question is why should there be a line about basic computer competency?
Why can't many methods be available to people, instead of restricting ourselves to certain methods?
Not everyone went to college. Heck, not everyone goes to high school. Those are very often the people who need government and medical services the most.
Yeah there's a learning curve but by and large even across operating system there are consistencies and even technically illiterate users can get up to speed quickly.
Do you remember the first time you discovered you could swipe in from the right in windows, or down from the top in android to access hidden functionality? Or the magic swipe to go back in the browser? Have you tried accessing the internet from small rural town USA? If you leave the coasts there are places you can't get cell service, much less blazing fast cell based internet from a rural provider. Those coverage maps the providers show in their advertisements are huge lies. Modern web UI's don't tend to run great on HugesNet, or single bar 3G.
That is just the tip, UI's have majorly regressed from the time period of the original iphone. Go to the local senior citizens home and give a bunch of them modern android/iphones and see how many can figure out how to add a contact, or send an email. Worse companies like consumer cellular have a section for flip phones. Not that it is really bad. My mother has one and likes it more than any smart phone, but its limits her.
Most people here could probably work it out eventually, but most people are not the general population.
I've been temporary renting my old house, and I don't take credit cards, nor am I setting up a custom merchant/billing/etc system for one renter. Mostly because all the easy solutions eat a percentage of the transaction.
So, outside of the initial cashiers check for the security/etc depost, I've been willing to take direct depost, or any other electronic form of payment that can deposit money into a checking account I've setup.
Funny thing is, all of my renters so far have ended up sending paper checks. Including the first one who also happened to be a pretty serious software engineer. That is despite the fact that there are a dozen billpay/etc services and various electronic transfer/etc services in existence. Overwhelmingly they are ripoffs, and the few run by honest banks in a number of cases actually send paper checks if the bill isn't for a major credit card company.
Try it. Can your bank send a thousand dollar plus amount to a random 3rd party bank/account for free (or a trivial fee?). I doubt it. For whatever reason setting up a funds transfer between two arbitrary checking accounts is more difficult than it should be.
So your anecdada cancels out his anecdata?
I work in healthcare, occasionally customer-facing. Your dad is the exception.
Your laptop missing modern features isn't a problem with your father's skills.