How to build a website suitable for the needs of the elderly

The needs of the elderly for software and Web sites are not much different from those of ordinary people, and they certainly do not need to be protected. Now let's look at their needs.

Tu Fui, Ego Eris

"I was you, you will be me," is often engraved on the tombstone. For usability professionals, it is a lesson in the design of older people, who are not a group of eccentric or unexpected people, like us-but older. At first they were overlooked by developers, who now have a growing interest in the age group of 60 years or older. Their use of the network, has been with children and grandchildren of e-mail communication, development to the booking of holidays, ordering goods, stocks, etc., to form a political and social active group. There is a demand for it--as people begin to provide websites and products for seniors, developers also find design incentives to meet their specific needs.

But what are the special availability needs of the elderly? It might be a lot less than we thought. Their design and usability needs are not fundamentally different from the rest of the population, but they emphasize the overall environment, needs and interests.

Technical issues

For many people, terminology, jargon, and technical language form usability barriers, especially for older people, who are less likely to see these nouns. A survey by usability consulting firm Webcredible shows that older people are less knowledgeable about "minimise" or "scroll" terms, and rarely download-either because they are afraid of "bugs" or because they need to install Adobe Acrobat Reader. Also, their mental model of working with hyperlinks takes longer, so they may omit important links or click on the wrong items without links.

Conceptual issues

The excellent design for the elderly is based on the concept of clarity. What is the purpose of the website? What is the purpose of each region and subregion within each page? How do they interact with each other? How can you easily navigate between these parts? There may not be much new content in these places, but there may be a large number of key differences. The success of many Web sites depends on the way we build the mental model of the website, and the degree to which our preferred sites adhere to these patterns. Older people are slower to accept explicit patterns, especially web sites, so while they can quickly understand the Pull-down menu behavior, they may not realize that they also need to scroll the page. Design solves many of these types of problems, such as limiting content to a Web page (completely avoiding scrolling) and using the "click here" hyperlink to reduce misunderstandings.

Design problems

Many of the sites that are claimed to be designed for the elderly do provide some useful advice or services to the elderly family and caregivers. Therefore, it is important not to exclude certain groups of people directly or indirectly. Simon Bottrell, the consultant's neocreative designer, recommends avoiding the use of colored crayons, large fonts, and "granny colors" associated with such sites. For many older people, he says, treating them in a protective way is more objectionable than the science that blinds them.

Neocreative recently redesigned the information web site "advice and care", and in the design process, Bottrell's team first established a clear concept of expression through good design. Bottrell the readability, font type and size, background contrast as a design focus, so that color labels and headings play an important role in distinguishing information types. San serif fonts are clearer than serif fonts, but the serif fonts that apply contrast make the title more prominent. The font of the General Assembly makes people feel uncomfortable, and reduce the amount of effective information; the font is too small to see clearly. A 10-or 12-pound font can be a good choice-just make it easy to adjust.

Design for the elderly is a typical example of applying reasonable design principles, but pay more attention to visual restrictions and use technical terminology carefully. It is also the best way to address the only unique feature of the elderly population, the loss of vision. Easy to adjust text size, limited number of text (the need to increase readability and reduce scrolling), hyperlinks clearly highlighted, strong contrast, all of these factors help to improve the user's recognition of the site, the formation of a more accurate mental model, and ultimately establish access to more convenient web sites.

Joanna Bawa is a usability advisor and technical writer. Over the past 15 years, she has been involved in the analysis, evaluation and improvement of information quality and usability in large and small organizations and companies.