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About the relevance of accessibility barriers in the everyday interactions of older people with the web

Published: 20 April 2009 Publication History

Abstract

This paper reports key findings of a 3-year ethnographical study of the everyday interactions of older people with the web. The data consisted of in-situ observations and conversations with 388 older people while using myriads of web and computer technologies daily. The results revealed that the accessibility barriers that had a more negative effect on the daily interactions of older people with the web were due to their difficulties in remembering steps, understanding web and computer jargon and using the mouse, despite their willingness to use it. These obstacles were much more important than those caused by their difficulties perceiving visual information, understanding icons and using the keyboard. The prioritization of barriers was explained by two key aspects in ageing with new technologies, independency and inclusiveness, and a desired condition of web (user) interfaces, consistency in terminology. These results suggest that these three aspects should be considered carefully in enhancing web accessibility for older people, as well as allowing us to grasp older people's everyday web accessibility barriers. The paper discusses possible ways of making use of these findings to make the web more accessible to older people.

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    cover image ACM Other conferences
    W4A '09: Proceedings of the 2009 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibililty (W4A)
    April 2009
    189 pages
    ISBN:9781605585611
    DOI:10.1145/1535654
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 20 April 2009

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    Author Tags

    1. barriers
    2. ethnography
    3. older people
    4. web accessibility

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    • (2021)A Multi-Perspective Theoretical Analysis to Web AccessibilityResearch Anthology on Digital Transformation, Organizational Change, and the Impact of Remote Work10.4018/978-1-7998-7297-9.ch005(70-92)Online publication date: 2021
    • (2021)Perceived benefits from non-formal digital training sessions in later life: views of older adult learners, peer tutors, and teachersInternational Journal of Lifelong Education10.1080/02601370.2021.1919768(1-15)Online publication date: 2-May-2021
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    • (2021)An analysis of social interaction between novice older adults when learning gesture-based skills through simple digital gamesUniversal Access in the Information Society10.1007/s10209-021-00793-421:3(639-655)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2021
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