WAI and WAI-AGE project: Understanding of Accessibility Requirements Due to Ageing

Dear Ms Brewer and Dr Arch

For the past 3 1/2 years I have been coordinating an EU project [DIADEM
contract 034106] which looked specifically at producing assistive web-based
technology to enable older people with cognitive declines to confidently and
successfully interact with online forms. The project looked at two
relatively unexplored aspects of assistive technology within the eInclusion
agenda. First it tackled the cognitive declines of later life and second it
addressed the specific task of online data entry to obtain a good or
service.

I believe the WAI-AGE project is already aware of my colleague Dr Lorna
Lines work on web accessibility for older users. She was responsible for
leading the initial investigations and the trial activities within the
DIADEM project.

As part of our concluding activities we have summarised the lessons learned
within the DIADEM project as a public report (attached). I now wish to offer
this to the WAI-AGE task force as a contribution to the project's work on
understanding accessibility requirements due to ageing.

The guidelines we have developed are specifically related to online forms
rather than web pages in general or information retrieval tasks. In some
cases they re-enforce WCAG 2.0 guidelines and your specific guidance in
"Developing Websites for Older People". However, there are also some new
issues raised in our work.

As part of the project we identify two areas of W3C work on standards which
appear to us as gaps in the programme.

First there is the need to distinguish between transactions (as perceived by
users) and forms (as units of interaction between user agents and servers).
The current moves to wards web 2.0 and AJAX scripting technology emphasise
the need for such a clearly defined distinction.

AJAX technology also presents significant difficulties for assistive
technology (like DIADEM) leading to our second comment on the standards
framework. Assistive technology is treated as a bolt on bit at the end of
the delivery chain, which limits its effectiveness. We believe treating it
as part of the normal system architecture would ensure standards recognise
its importance and overcome these limitations.

Please don't hesitate to contact me (tony.elliman@brunel.ac.uk) if you wish
to discuss further our findings or how they may be of use to you. The
projects confidential deliverables have more details than we present in the
attached document and further extracts from them could be probably be shared
with a wider audience where this is appropriate.

Yours Sincerely

Dr A D (Tony) Elliman
	BTech, MBCS, MIET, CITP, CEng
DIADEM Project Co-ordinator & BIAS Director for ICT and Ageing
Reader, School of Information Systems, Computing and Mathematics
Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK