Adaptive User Interfaces: Benefit or Impediment for Lower-Literacy Users?

This paper addresses web accessibility and usability for lower-literacy users with limited ICT skills. Although adaptive and adaptable user interfaces have been studied and discussed at least since the 80s, the potential of adaptive user interfaces is still far from realization. A main conclusion drawn in this paper is that simple, straightforward and intuitive adaptivity mechanisms may work well, but more complex and pervasive ones don't, and may even be counterproductive. A potential pitfall may be simplistic and "cognitivist" user and task modelling that fails to take the user's experience, competence and socio-psychological context--in short, the user's actual, real perspective and environment--into account.