Special Interface Requirements for Older Adults

This paper covers aspects of human-computer interface design which are required to accommodate older adults with age associated memory and cognitive and visual impairment. It derives from experiments carried out at the Speech Project at Oxford Brookes University, on a Web browser for older visually impaired users, and is related to the absorption of speech output, which can be used to access the Web by mobile phone and by other ubiquitous devices. This paper also covers the more general problems faced by older adults when using a computer interface. With the growth of ubiquitous computing more information will be made available through speech interfaces in an information society for all, and everyone must have equal access to information in order to function effectively. Those who are unable to access vital information, which is increasingly distributed via the Internet using speech, will become marginalised within society. Older people using computers, for the first time are faced with new ways of thinking and have little experience to draw upon. The faculties that decrease with age such as memory, sight, and strategy building are precisely those that are required for successful computer use. This paper describes interface design for these users using voice help and discusses the results of experiments, on such an interface. They show that voice help can get older adults going on the Web where they couldn’t before and that length of spoken output message and level of functionality are crucial.

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