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- Mat Mirabella
- Principle Accessibility / Human Factors Specialist
- Melbourne – Australia
- Mathew.Mirabella@team.telstra.com
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- Some characteristics of older people
- Is usability different for older people?
- Some Usability Principles
- Target Design
- Navigation and user flow design
- Text, icon and content design and layout
- User Feedback, Help and Support
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- Older people = our definition is 60+ years, mostly 70+ years
- Did not grow up with computers and modern technology - may not be
familiar with interfaces such as MS Windows
- Are not likely to be familiar with the abstract model underlying many
GUIs, such as menus, tree structures, etc.
- More likely to accept UIs with real physical buttons than abstract UIs
- Some members may be acquiring physical and sensory impairments due to
aging, such as vision loss, hearing loss and dexterity difficulties.
- May find it difficult to deal with high cognitive loads for tasks
- e.g. losing short term memory or the ability to recall complex
information
- Are effected by issues that arise from inaccessibility of interfaces
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- Older people therefore often differ from other people in terms of:
- 1. Physical capability
(dexterity/mobility)
- 2. Sensory ability
(vision/hearing)
- 3. Cognitive capacity
(memory/recall)
- 4. Level of experience with
technology
- So making new applications usable and useful to older people is
different and can be a challenge
- But a challenge that our accessibility efforts can help to address
- It is also largely an issue of good general usability
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- Regarding links, buttons and other items
- 1. Provide large and clearly
distinguished
- targets with labels that are easy to read and understand
- e.g. buttons on a phone handset, large links
- 2. There should be clear and easily perceived confirmation of target
capture. Older adults should
not be expected to detect small changes
- e.g. Large highlight regions on selection
- 3. Targets should be clearly named and should lead to unique actions
- e.g. strong labels on buttons
- 4. Targets should be in recognizable structures and should not be too
tightly clustered in the interface
- e.g. phone number pad grid or menu of links are recognizable structures
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- Use consistent navigation tools throughout an interface with extra and
bolder navigation queues
- e.g. consistent navigation areas, bolded headings, etc.
- Avoid fly out dynamic menus
- e.g. those menus that appear and disappear depending on where the mouse
is moved
- Group information into meaningful categories but do not use a deep
hierarchy and limit the number of items in lists
- May seem hard to achieve - conflict of ideas?
- Avoid scroll bars or minimize the need for scrolling
- e.g. make web pages look like real pages
- Provide only one open window. Pop-ups or multiple overlapping windows
should be avoided
- Provide redundancy in access to features
- e.g. redundant links, alternative methods of access, multi modal
access, DTMF key presses that do the same as speech commands on a phone
system
- Provide ample time to read information under time dependent constraints
- e.g. older people may need more time
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- Use simple and clear language and avoid irrelevant information
- WCAG discusses the concept of simple and clear language - hard to
define
- Graphics and icons should be clear, simple, relevant and not for
decoration. No extraneous animation should be present
- Important information should be highlighted or made to be easily
identified within the interface
- e.g. using headings, bolding, white space and line spacing
- Avoid moving, blinking or scrolling text (mentioned in WCAG)
- The main body of the text should be in sentence case, not ALL CAPITAL
LETTERS
- Use san serif or serif type fonts of at least 3mm in height and avoid
script or fancy font types.
- Color should be use conservatively and should not be used as the sole
means of conveying information or meaning
- Background screens should not change rapidly or be cluttered with
patterns or images that reduce contrast with the foreground content
- Use high contrast between background and foreground content
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- Provide help in forms of quick reference guides, tutorials and help
information
- e.g. A site map may also be useful
- Support user control and freedom
- Let users have control over their interactions, to go back, undo, or
quit
- Error messages should be simple, descriptive and easy to follow
- e.g. the HTTP 404 error is not descriptive
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- Some characteristics of older people
- Is usability different for older people?
- Some Usability Principles
- Target Design
- Navigation and user flow design
- Text, icon and content design and layout
- User Feedback, Help and Support
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- Kurniawan, Sri and Zaphiris, Panayiotis, 2005. "Research-derived web design
guidelines for older people."
Proceedings of the 7th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on
Computers and accessibility.
pp. 124-135.
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