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The potential of adaptive interfaces as an accessibility aid for older web users

Published: 26 April 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Supporting effective and enjoyable Web usage by people with sensory, motor and cognitive impairments requires more than just accessible Web content. There is an additional task of matching people with an accessibility solution that best accommodates their particular needs - which, especially for older Web users, may fluctuate in severity, number and combination. Lack of awareness of one's own accessibility needs and the solutions that may exist to accommodate them may lead to a reduced quality Web browsing experience or even abandonment.
This paper discusses the difficulties in matching people with less severe, but multiple, impairments with the most appropriate accessibility features at a given time, and explores the role of automated or semi-automated adaptations as a solution for this problem. We review related work, and report on the early stages of our own work conducted to prove the concept of adaptations for accessibility in the specific context of supporting Web users with age-related capability decline. We also consider the potential ethical issues of automated and semi-automated accessibility adaptations on the wellbeing of older Web users, and how these might best be managed in a suitably sensitive way.

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cover image ACM Other conferences
W4A '10: Proceedings of the 2010 International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)
April 2010
223 pages
ISBN:9781450300452
DOI:10.1145/1805986
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: 26 April 2010

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Author Tags

  1. accessibility
  2. adaptation
  3. inclusion
  4. older people
  5. web

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W4A '10 Paper Acceptance Rate 10 of 32 submissions, 31%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 171 of 371 submissions, 46%

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  • (2024)DIY Assistive Software: End-User Programming for Personalized Assistive TechnologyACM SIGACCESS Accessibility and Computing10.1145/3654768.3654772(1-1)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2024
  • (2023)Hacking, Switching, Combining: Understanding and Supporting DIY Assistive Technology Design by Blind PeopleProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581249(1-17)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
  • (2021)A Case for Making Web Accessibility Guidelines Accessible: Older Adult Content Creators and Web Accessibility PlanningProceedings of the 23rd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3441852.3476472(1-6)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2021
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  • (2018)Typing Tutor: Individualized Tutoring in Text Entry for Older Adults Based on Statistical Input Stumble DetectionJournal of Information Processing10.2197/ipsjjip.26.36226(362-374)Online publication date: 2018
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