Loading
Research & Learning Organisation
Research & Learning Organisation
IFB Gaming builds the engagement infrastructure and measurement systems that turn digital access into lasting participation, particularly for communities that conventional provision has failed to reach.
Most digital inclusion work stops at connectivity and basic skills. IFB Gaming operates in the spaces that come after: gaming-powered engagement, behavioural participation, AI inclusion, and the measurement frameworks that prove change is happening.
Everything IFB Gaming builds is grounded in one commitment: that inequality in digital access is a structural problem requiring sustained, community-led action. Empowering Futures is our response, a commitment to a fairer, future-proofed UK where no community is left behind by technology.
Free to use · No login required · No referral needed
How it works
IFB Gaming is one of the only organisations in the UK operating deliberately across all three layers of digital inclusion, from first access all the way to AI-ready transformation. Most stop at layer one.
From foundation to goal, every layer connected.
The measurement framework, the Check and Stage Index, runs across all three layers, tracking movement from access to transformation.
Who it is for
Every framework, every tool, every Data Waypoint exists because these barriers are real. The hub is built around people like these, not abstract user groups.
These are the people the Stage Index, the Inclusion Check, the toolkits, and Winter Data Care are designed for. Explore the full personas in the toolkit.
Our structure
IFB Gaming is not a single programme or a collection of tools. Four distinct categories, each doing a different job, all serving the same commitment.
Direct delivery that reaches people facing the deepest barriers: access, participation, and lived experience of exclusion.
Evidence, insight, and measurement work that gives IFB Gaming analytical credibility and policy relevance.
Self-directed, freely available instruments. No referral, no login. Each is also a data instrument feeding IFB Gaming’s research.
Frontier work most digital inclusion organisations are not yet doing, building capability for the next decade.
Tools & products
Each tool is self-contained and freely available, no referral, no account. Each is also a data instrument. Together they map inclusion status across individuals and communities.
Plain-language self-assessment across four dimensions. Benchmarked, scored, routes directly to the right support. Part of the IFB Measurement Framework.
8-pillar scored report with London benchmarks and postcode-mapped support. Includes an AI Literacy pillar, unique among community tools in the UK.
11 interactive sections covering what digital inclusion means, who it affects, six community personas, and national policy context.
Eight self-paced modules for complete beginners. Audio, 6 languages, progress tracking, and completion certificate.
Free SIM cards, refurbished devices, and digital confidence support for residents facing data poverty in Southwark and Lambeth. If someone cannot afford to stay connected, none of the other tools reach them. Winter Data Care removes that barrier first, and is Empowering Futures made practical.
IFB Digital Inclusion Measurement Framework
Most digital inclusion organisations count outputs. This framework measures position, where someone is on the inclusion spectrum, and change over time.
Scores individuals across four dimensions: Access, Skills, Safety, Participation, benchmarked against ONS and Lloyds data. Routes to specific immediate support.
Take the CheckComprehensive 8-pillar assessment with scored report and postcode-mapped support. Includes an AI Literacy pillar. The only community-produced assessment of this depth in the UK.
Open Stage IndexWhy IFB Gaming
Most digital inclusion work focuses on devices, connectivity, and basic skills. IFB Gaming builds in the spaces that follow, always connecting frontier thinking back to lived experience.
As AI reshapes services, work, and daily life, exclusion is extending beyond internet access to whether people can safely engage with AI tools. The Stage Index already includes an AI Literacy pillar.
For Tyler: understanding what AI tools could do for his job search, not in theory, but in a session, with support.
Most inclusion metrics stop at access. IFB Gaming builds frameworks to understand why people disengage even after access is achieved, the behavioural gap that conventional provision misses.
For Margaret: having a smartphone is not inclusion. Feeling safe and confident enough to use it, that is the gap worth measuring.
Gaming mechanics, progression, reward, community belonging, are among the most powerful engagement frameworks ever built. Applying them to digital inclusion is largely unexplored territory.
For Amara: motivation and community matter as much as access. The infrastructure that keeps people engaged matters as much as the device.
IFB Gaming builds longitudinal, community-level data through the Check, Stage Index, and Data Waypoints, a type of measurement community organisations have never had access to.
For Jean: her struggle with online care forms should be visible in data, informing service design, not disappearing into a call centre log.
There is no established methodology for measuring individual inclusion status over time at community level. IFB Gaming’s measurement framework is among the first serious attempts to build one.
For David: the question is not whether he is “online”, it’s whether the services he needs are actually reachable from where he is.
Digital exclusion is not a technical problem with a technical solution. It is a structural inequality requiring sustained, community-led action. Empowering Futures names that as a justice issue.
For Nadia: the barrier is not her visual impairment, it is the failure of organisations to design with her in mind.
The pathway
Each tool is a step. You can enter at any point, the ecosystem meets people where they are.
2-minute snapshot. Find barriers. Get routed to the right first step.
Eight guided modules. Build foundational skills and confidence.
Understand the wider field and where you fit within it.
Full 8-pillar assessment. Scored report. Postcode-mapped support.
Become a Data Waypoint. Join NDIN. Partner with IFB Gaming.
Empowering Futures is the commitment that makes everything else necessary. A future-proofed UK means one where the communities most at risk from accelerating technological change are the ones most actively supported to navigate it. IFB Gaming exists to make that happen, through research, tools, infrastructure, and the kind of presence in communities that cannot be replicated from a distance.