Launching a special health code for the elderly: Ministry of Industry and Information Technology requires WeChat, Alipay and other payment services to be adapted for the elderly

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As the elderly population in my country increases in number, some software must be modified for this group of people so that they can better enjoy the convenience of digitalization.

In December last year, the Ministry of Transport, together with seven other departments including the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the National Health Commission, the People's Bank of China, the National Railway Administration, the Civil Aviation Administration of China, and China State Railway Group Co., Ltd., issued the "Notice on Effectively Solving the Difficulties of the Elderly in Using Intelligent Technology and Facilitating Their Daily Transportation", which further refined the policy measures in the transportation field to facilitate travel services for the elderly, ensuring convenient daily transportation for the elderly in the "smart era".

According to news from Shanghai, Shanghai's "Suishenban" App, which allows all government services, has launched a "Senior Edition" specifically for the elderly. This version has enlarged the display font and displays the Suishen code, medical payment "one-stop service", bus code and subway code commonly used by the elderly, making it easier for the elderly to operate and use.

As the Internet becomes more and more popular, it is particularly important to solve the problem of the difficulty of the elderly to access the Internet. It is reported that in order to deal with the difficulty of the elderly to access the Internet, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has begun to promote the first batch of aging-friendly and barrier-free transformation. Specifically, the list of APPs includes: news and information products such as Tencent News and Sina Weibo, as well as social communication tools such as WeChat and QQ, life shopping products such as Taobao, JD.com, Douyin, Baidu, and financial, travel, and medical APPs such as Alipay, Baidu Maps, Didi Chuxing, and Dingdang Express Pharmacy.

The special action plan points out that for the elderly, more products with large fonts, large icons, high-contrast characters and other functional features should be launched, and more companies should be encouraged to launch interface modes with simple interfaces and convenient operations, and realize various barrier-free functions such as one-key operation and text input prompts. The ability to recognize dialects should be improved to facilitate the use of smart devices by the elderly who do not speak Mandarin.

In response to the problem that there are too many forced advertisements in current Internet applications that can easily mislead the elderly, the Internet websites and mobile APPs will be transformed into elderly-friendly versions, care versions, and barrier-free versions. There will no longer be advertising plug-ins, and payment operations, especially, will not have any induced buttons.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology requires China Telecom, China Mobile, and China Unicom to allow seniors aged 65 and above to dial the customer service hotlines of these three telecom operators with one-click access to manual consultation services, without having to go through complicated voice prompts and number selection procedures. At the same time, the offline business halls of the three telecom operators provide a caring channel for the elderly, and there will be special personnel to guide the elderly into the business halls.