Community Stories

For Tina King, learning digital skills has meant much more than learning how to use a computer. As someone who is hard of hearing, technology has opened up new ways for her to communicate, understand what is being said, and participate more fully in a world that increasingly depends on digital tools. But having access to technology is only part of the equation. Tina has also had to learn how to find and use the accessibility features that make that technology work for her.

Tina grew up in Pittsburgh and came to Literacy Pittsburgh after a friend encouraged her to sign up for computer classes. She started with the basics, learning how to use a computer and laptop from the ground up. She quickly discovered there was a lot she wanted to learn: Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint; Google Calendar, Google Drive, and Google Maps; typing; Zoom; and cybersecurity.

As her skills grew, Tina began to see technology not simply as something she needed to learn, but as something she could adapt to her own needs. She explored captioning and transcription tools that can help her follow conversations and understand spoken information. She has seen these tools used on computers and during Zoom calls, which made her curious about what other technologies might help people who are hard of hearing.

Before her classes, Tina did not always know what these tools were called or where to find them. Now, she knows to ask.

“What is that called?” Tina remembers asking when she encountered a tool that could help people who are hard of hearing follow what was being said.

That question captures an important part of digital navigation. Accessibility is not always obvious, and having a device does not necessarily mean someone knows how to make it work for them. A person may need to know that captions exist, where to turn them on, how to adjust them, or which communication platform provides the features they need. Sometimes, the most important digital skill is knowing what question to ask.

For Tina, that curiosity has become a habit. She does not expect herself to know everything. Instead, she asks, “What should I do?” “What does this mean?” and “How do I do this?” Then she practices.

Tina often brings her own laptop to class and continues practicing at home. She attends open lab sessions, sometimes three days a week, where she can work on typing, study what she has learned, and ask her instructors questions.

“I keep practicing,” she said. “I will never, never stop. I keep going, keep going. I’m going to keep practicing. I never stop.”

Access is more than having a device

Tina’s experience illustrates why digital inclusion is about more than whether someone owns a computer or has an internet connection. A person may have a device but lack the skills to use it. They may know how to use a program but not know how to turn on an accessibility feature. They may be able to participate in a video call but struggle to follow the conversation because captions are unavailable or difficult to locate.

For people with disabilities, those barriers can affect access to essential services that have increasingly moved online. The U.S. Department of Justice has emphasized that inaccessible websites and mobile applications can make it difficult or impossible for people with disabilities to access government services, including health care, education, benefits, transportation, tax information, and civic services. In 2024, the Department issued a Title II rule establishing technical accessibility requirements for state and local government websites and mobile applications, using Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or WCAG, 2.1 Level AA as the technical standard.¹

For Tina, accessibility is not an abstract technical requirement. It affects whether she can understand a conversation, participate in a Zoom call, communicate with other people, and make use of the same digital tools available to everyone else.

That is where digital navigation becomes important. A digital navigator can help someone identify the technology that meets their needs, find accessibility features, learn how to use them, and troubleshoot when something does not work. The goal is not simply to hand someone a device, but to help them understand how to make that device useful in their own life.

Tina’s classes have also helped her become more confident navigating communication and services online. She uses email and text messages to communicate with coaches and service providers, receives information about appointments and opportunities, and uses online tools to stay connected. The skills she is learning give her greater control over how she communicates and accesses information.

Learning to recognize the warning signs

For Tina, that growing independence is closely connected to cybersecurity because she has experienced firsthand what can happen when personal information is compromised.

Years ago, while working as a housekeeper at a hotel, Tina experienced fraud and identity theft. She remembers discovering that her accounts had been frozen and that her medical information, account information, and paycheck had been stolen. She initially did not understand what was happening.

She sought legal help to figure out what had happened and eventually recovered what had been taken from her. The experience was frightening and confusing, and it also had consequences for her employment. Tina was eventually let go from the hotel, an experience she says she did not understand because she believed she had done nothing wrong.

She turned to her former counselor through Pennsylvania’s Office of Vocational Rehabilitation for help navigating what came next. Her counselor helped her understand the situation and connect with the support she needed.

Years later, cybersecurity lessons at Literacy Pittsburgh gave Tina another layer of protection. Her instructors taught her about scams, fraud, suspicious messages, passwords, and protecting personal information. They taught her to slow down, look carefully, and ask questions before responding.

Those lessons are particularly meaningful for Tina because she knows what it feels like when something goes wrong and you do not immediately understand why.

The stakes are significant, particularly for older adults. Adults age 60 and older reported $2.4 billion in fraud losses to the Federal Trade Commission in 2024, about four times the $600 million reported in 2020. The FTC notes that these figures represent reported losses, meaning they do not capture all fraud that occurs.²

Some of those losses are extraordinarily large. The FTC found that combined reported losses of more than $100,000 from business- and government-impersonation scams among adults age 60 and older increased eightfold between 2020 and 2024, from $55 million to $445 million.³ Older adults also reported $159 million in losses to tech-support scams in 2024.²

Pennsylvania faces the same broader challenge. The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office reported that Pennsylvanians lost more than $76 million to scammers in 2025, based on more than 4,000 scam-related complaints received by its Bureau of Consumer Protection. Phishing and government-impersonation scams were among the top scam types, while wire transfers and cryptocurrency were the most common methods of payment among reported losses.⁴

The issue is particularly relevant in Pennsylvania because older adults make up a significant share of the state’s population. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that 20% of Pennsylvanians were age 65 or older in 2024.⁵

For Tina, those numbers are not abstract. She has already experienced the confusion that can come when someone else gains access to personal information. Learning how to identify suspicious messages, protect passwords, recognize scams, and stop before responding gives her a way to reduce the chances of experiencing that again.

At one point, Tina received repeated calls from numbers she did not recognize. Instead of answering, she let the phone ring. Her teacher had taught her not to engage with suspicious calls.

“Block,” Tina said, recalling the lesson.

It is a small example of a much larger skill: knowing when to stop.

Prevention before recovery

That is where digital navigation can play a preventive role. A digital navigator can help someone learn how to recognize a suspicious message, check whether a website is legitimate, understand a privacy setting, create stronger passwords, use multifactor authentication, or stop and ask for help before sending money or personal information.

The same trusted person who helps someone turn on captions or find a transcription tool may also be someone they can turn to when an unfamiliar text message, phone call, email, or pop-up does not look right. For someone like Tina, accessibility and cybersecurity are not separate parts of digital inclusion. Both determine whether she can use technology independently and safely.

There is also a financial argument for prevention. Pennsylvania’s Department of Aging conducted a study of 455 substantiated financial-exploitation cases from 10 Area Agencies on Aging covering 14 counties during fiscal year 2017–18. Among the 315 cases with documented dollar losses, the average loss was $39,395. The study found that only 4% of all losses were ever recovered.⁶

Those figures are historical, and they should not be presented as a current statewide loss rate. But they illustrate the challenge of recovering money after financial exploitation has occurred. The same Pennsylvania study concluded that prevention education should be part of the state’s response to financial exploitation.⁶

The distinction matters. Digital navigation cannot guarantee that someone will never be scammed, and there is not enough evidence to assign a specific dollar amount to the savings produced by digital-navigation programs. But prevention can create an opportunity to intervene before money is transferred, personal information is disclosed, or an account is compromised.

Once a loss occurs, recovery can require banks, law enforcement, attorneys, consumer-protection agencies, and other support systems. Pennsylvania’s Department of Aging has specifically warned that investigators are often unable to recover all of the money taken from an older adult through financial exploitation, which is why education and prevention are important.⁷

For Tina, learning to stop and ask a question can therefore be more than a digital skill. It can be a form of protection.

Building confidence through support

The classes have given Tina more than information. They have given her confidence.

She is still looking for work and wants to find a job that is the right fit. Tina has spent much of her working life in housekeeping, including years working in hotels. She knows how to work hard, but she also knows that navigating today’s workplace increasingly requires digital skills. Her classes have helped her take on those challenges one step at a time, while also giving her tools to communicate, find information, and protect herself online.

For Tina, digital literacy is deeply connected to community. She loves communicating with people and being part of a team. In class, she makes a point of arriving on time, greeting her teachers and classmates, and staying focused. When she learns something new, she wants to share it.

“They share with me and I share with them,” she said.

That spirit of mutual support is important to Tina. She knows what it feels like to need help, and she wants to be able to help someone else when they need it. Her instructors have helped her learn how to navigate technology, but perhaps just as importantly, they have shown her that it is okay to ask questions.

For someone who is hard of hearing, that support can mean knowing where to find an accessibility feature, figuring out how to use it, and having someone to ask when it does not work as expected. It can also mean having a trusted person to turn to when something online seems suspicious.

That is the broader promise of digital navigation: helping people move from having access to technology to being able to use it confidently, independently, accessibly, and safely.

Tina’s story is a reminder that digital inclusion is about more than putting a computer in someone’s hands. It is about making sure people have the skills, accessibility tools, and trusted support they need to use technology in ways that work for their lives.

For Tina, that means finding tools that help her communicate. It means protecting herself from scams. It means managing appointments and information. It means continuing to look for work. And it means being able to participate, ask questions, and stay connected.

She knows there will always be something new to learn.

“What’s next?” she asks herself.

Then she keeps going.

“Keep moving,” Tina said. “Keep moving.”

Footnotes

1. U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division. (2024, April 8). Fact sheet: New rule on the accessibility of web content and mobile apps provided by state and local governments. https://www.ada.gov/resources/2024-03-08-web-rule/

2. Federal Trade Commission. (2025, December). Protecting older consumers 2024–2025: A report of the Federal Trade Commission. https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/P144400-OlderAdultsReportDec2025.pdf

3. Federal Trade Commission. (2025, August 7). FTC data show a more than four-fold increase in reports of impersonation scammers stealing tens and even hundreds of thousands from older adults. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/08/ftc-data-show-more-four-fold-increase-reports-impersonation-scammers-stealing-tens-even-hundreds

4. Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General. (2026, January 29). AG meets with older residents with warning that Pennsylvanians lost $76M to scammers in 2025; A.I. fueling more sophisticated swindles. https://www.attorneygeneral.gov/taking-action/ag-meets-with-older-residents-with-warning-that-pennsylvanians-lost-76m-to-scammers-in-2025-a-i-fueling-more-sophisticated-swindles/

5. U.S. Census Bureau. (2024). QuickFacts: Pennsylvania. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/pa

6. Pennsylvania Department of Aging. (2021). Financial exploitation of older adults study report. The study examined 455 substantiated cases from fiscal year 2017–2018; 315 cases contained documented dollar losses. https://www.pa.gov/content/dam/copapwp-pagov/en/aging/documents/publications/older-adults-financial-exploitation-study/documents/pa%20department%20of%20aging%20%20financial%20exploitation%20of%20older%20adults%20study%20report.pdf

7. Pennsylvania Department of Aging. (2024, June 28). Shapiro administration urges older adults to watch for scams when purchasing an annuity. https://www.pa.gov/agencies/aging/newsroom/shapiro-administration-urges-older-adults-to-watch-for-scams-whe.html