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Nov 21 2011

Is it easy for older adults?

Older-adult
Designing a website so that it is easy for older adults is important, not just for accessibility reasons, but to build credibility and trust in the eyes of these users. After complaining a bit about the difficulty he was having reading the text on the homepage, an older test participant in a recent user test stated, "“The first impressions I get is that it is a company that doesn't care about older people."  Another older participant shared, "[The difficult to read fonts] really would be something that would cause me to decide not to do business with this organization. It just makes me feel like they're not really putting themselves in the shoes of somebody like me, somebody who is older.”

We know that most older adults experience some type of vision loss. In addition, cognitive abilities such as working memory, perceptual speed, and text comprehension, among others, are also impacted.

To make your site easy for older adults, keep these recommendations in mind from the National Institute on Aging.

  1. Break information into short sections.
  2. Give instructions clearly and number each step.
  3. Allow additional space around clickable targets.
  4. Use 12- or 14-point type size, and make it easy for users to enlarge text.
  5. Use high-contrast color combinations, such as black type against a white background.
  6. Minimize the use of jargon and technical terms.
  7. Provide a speech function to hear text read aloud.
  8. Provide text-only versions of multimedia content.
  9. Minimize scrolling.
  10. Choose a search engine that uses keywords and doesn’t require special characters or knowledge of Boolean terms.
  11. Use single mouse clicks.

In our user testing,we've found the first six recommendations to be the most critical. By following these guidelines and designing your website to be considerate of older adults, you'll build instant credibility with this user group.

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design for older adults