Although this topic has nothing to do with website usability, it deserves attention. At the recent Aging in America Conference, presented by the American Society on Aging, we presented a poster on “The Digital Afterlife.” This doesn’t refer to anything supernatural, but to digital artifacts (emails, photos, profiles, etc.). What happens to them after we are [...]
I was pleased to read in VIA Magazine that AAA has revamped one of their sites, seniordriving.aaa.com. The article said the revision would provide new content, including advice, tools, and even brain-fitness exercises. The site officially launched March 1, 2012, and I checked it out as soon as possible. First, let me say that I love [...]
I know, I know, “silver” is one of many words on a long list of how to not refer to “them.” Maybe it’s a less touchy issue in the UK than it is here in the US. But in one of my many late-night internet surfing sessions, I came across this posting and thought it [...]
The menus, and the scrollbars, and the, um…you know, those things that do stuff? Actionable icons? I seem to have missed the meeting where Apple, Firefox, and Google decided to disappear these items, which were, perhaps, cluttering up their new, more streamlined user interfaces? Figure 1 shows a Google landing page, circa Jan 2012: When it looked [...]
Both WCAG and Section 508 recommend the ability to resize text, but the following implementation probably wasn’t what they had in mind. The provisions of Section 508 apply to the Federal Government, of course, but it should come as no surprise that some agencies do better at implementing accessibility than others. Don’t take a page [...]
Access Exchange International (AEI) is a non-governmental organization promoting accessible public transportation for persons with disabilities and seniors around the world. With support from a variety of sources including the World Bank, AEI has been extraordinarily successful at fostering both accessible design of pedestrian infrastructure and transport systems — consisting of everything from motorized rickshaws [...]
The Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group of the Association for Computing Machinery recently awarded Prof. Alan Newell (School of Computing, University of Dundee, Scotland) its Social Impact Award for his decades of work on making information and communications technology more accessible to seniors. Prof. Newell presented an overview of his work at the ACM CHI [...]
While gains in technology adoption are no doubt impressive and encouraging, it would be a huge mistake to assume that everybody is on the same technology curve. Think “technology natives” vs. “technology immigrants.” For instance, I help out in a class called “Intro to Macs” at a local senior center. The students all say they [...]
The world already has web usability design guidelines. In fact, we have many, many different versions of sets of web design guidelines. While they don’t necessarily agree with each other on everything, there’s a general consensus on some major issues (e.g., don’t use white font on a yellow background; don’t cause displays to blink at [...]