So sorry to hear about your mum, Arakah! I hope you got your travel exemption, and may she rest in peace!

Hi Thao,
I completely second what you have written. Maintaining the community’s health safety as well as compliance with rules due to the current pandemic has had a great impact on our literacy practices. Most of us likely spend a part of the day getting informed on the number of cases, covid hotspot locations as well as on the ever-changing lockdown rules. This is obviously made easier by technology. However, whilst most of this information is communicated to the general public through various means (e.g. press, tv, social media), I was wondering about how a person with no or limited digital literacy or access to the internet itself, such as some disadvantaged communities or the elderly, would be able to keep up to date effectively, especially with covid locations/dates and times? I feel the pandemic has highlighted further the disadvantage some communities face nowadays.

The process of taking the COVID-19 vaccination is a good example that could be related to literacy practices. In my country China, this social practice associate with using written language, record-keeping, using a keyboard, cell phone and so on. Most of the people who prepare to get vaccinated just need to show their health codes and ID cards. But when they register in the code card, they need to fill in some basic information about themselves includes IDs number, name, age, address and so on. They operate this process on their cell phone. Some old people who are unfamiliar with this technique will get help from their children or the service people. This process requires mass literacy in our society, for example, typing on the keyboard on their cell phone and recognize key information required to fill them in. Since there is a very large number of elderly people in China, the impediments of this process are not only the rate of literacy but also the popularize of a new technique.

Thanks, Vatnak! In many contexts, a mixed approach involving written messaging and direct approaches would be helpful and can best meet the needs of diverse communities.

This global pandemic has extended people literacy practice with some uncommon terms. Though have not registered for it, I found that news about vaccine improved my understanding about the importance of vaccination during the pandemic.

This reminded me when I did my Covid test (negative) a few months ago. Similar to your experience during vaccination day, once I finished with the testing, the staff gave me a brochure about what to do next. She also told me to self-isolate until the negative result has been released through mobile phone. This literacy practice is a new experience for me that exhibits how literacy has evolved during this global pandemic.

Thanks, Odette! It really is amazing to see how the pandemic how created new literacy-based forms of bureaucracy, governance, and control … stay safe!

Thanks, Jolie! Vietnam seems to have handled the communication challenges of the pandemic really well! We also heard lots of good things about inclusive communication strategies last year in the early stages of the pandemic when the key challenge was the provision of public health information to diverse populations.

Hi Judy, thank you for providing useful insights into steps and efforts related to Covid vaccination. In Vietnam, the vaccination event together with the Covid literacies are supported by basic and visual technologies; therefore, it eases manual efforts, simplifies and broadly distributes information to every citizen, especially the elderly and the homeless in my country. The government enforces mask wearing, social distancing and other compulsory instructions through newspaper and billboards. Similarly, my family received vaccination appointments by phones and verified their information and IDs against the local authorities’ computers. Additionally, the status of successful dose one and the second dose notification are also texted to them.

Thanks, Ingrid! Your mention of the academic questions being asked, reminds me that I had to answer a series of questions (do you have any allergies? do you carry an epipen? have you ever experienced anaphylactic shock? etc.) and one of them was “Do you have a mast cell disorder?” When I responded “I don’t know what that is. Can you explain?”, the nurse ticked “no” for me and said “you’d know if you had it” … while I appreciate the need for speed in a mass vaccination center, this interaction makes these questions similar to the small print: consumers seemingly are informed and have a choice but the only choice is to take it or leave it …

This ease of access may be attributable to a confluence of personal factors such as long-term residence and having a relatively high level of education in English, and sociopolitical factors. My local doctor’s surgery is in the city centre with affluent suburbs nearby, while the jurisdiction as a whole (the Northern Territory) often attracts additional government resources due to the poverty and social disadvantage suffered by the high proportion of Aboriginal residents. Distribution of these resources is an ongoing issue of contention.