Newsletter #94 Designing For Age

Created on 21/02/05

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According to Robert Prisuta of AARP www.aarp.org, a nonprofit organization for people age 50 and over, in the US in 1995 there were 68 million people 50+, by 2014 there will be 106 million. Older adults are therefore a rapidly growing demographic that Website owners should be aware of.

There have been a number of usability surveys of older adults. What stands out when reviewing these surveys is that older users have more trouble using the Web than those who are younger.

With that in mind let me summarise the findings of surveys.

Vision impairment - there is a 66% decrease in perceived light between someone who is 20 and a 60 year old (Weale 1961). Therefore:

• Older users prefer larger fonts
• They also have trouble matching or sorting colours
• Older adults have a reduced field of view

Motor Coordination is usually reduced in older adults so:

• Standard size links were difficult to click
• They didn't like using the scroll bar to move up or down a page
• They need more obvious visual clues that a button is clickable

Older users took far longer to find information because:

• They tended to read much more of the text on a page
• Had a slow careful strategy for selecting links
• They often got lost within the site and revisited pages they had already seen
• Were not familiar with Web terminology eg. URL, link, login

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How do these findings impact on Web design and usability generally?

• Many studies have suggested that Websites allow users to choose to make the font size smaller or larger.
  
  
• Have high contrast between the text and the background, as well as between darker and lighter colours in general. Avoid yellow and blue and green in close proximity.
  
  
• Older adults are cautious about clicking links. They are much more likely to click links that explicitly tell them what will happen when they click.
  
  
• Increase redundancy in links, making text AND bullet points links. Use image-based links that provide a larger target area for the user to click
  
  
• Minimise the use of secondary windows - older users were often confused and couldn't get back to the primary workspace.
  
  
• Avoid pages that have too much information on them (too busy).
  
  
• Pull-down menus, hierarchically walking menus, and other moving interface elements cause problems for seniors who are not always steady with the mouse.
  
  
• Websites should clearly distinguish between visited and unvisited links, otherwise seniors easily lose track of where they have been.

The US Department of Health and Human Services have published a checklist at http://usability.gov/checklist.pdf that adds the following technical advice:

• Incorporate buttons such as “Previous Page” and “Next Page” to allow the reader to review or move forward.
  
  
• Provide a site map to show how the site is organized.
  
  
• There are three ways to justify type: left, full, or centre justified. Left justified text is optimal for
  older adults.
  
  
• Use a sans serif typeface, such as Helvetica, that is not condensed. Avoid the use of serif, novelty, and display typefaces.

One of the more interesting findings is that in studies where Websites were modified to better meet guidelines for older adults, younger users gained by the same amount.

What this shows is that good Web design for older adults is almost always good design for everyone.

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Alex Garden

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