Re: Need to design for old people...

Hi Alan,

Alan Chuter wrote:
>>From Microsoft's report "Welcome to Being Human: Human-Computer Interaction in
> the Year 2020" [1]:
> 
> "Unlike previous generations, those growing old will be familiar with
> using computers and mobile phones. Hence, the need to design computer
> applications for old people who have not used email or the Web will no
> longer be a major concern"
> 
> They will have used the Web and email, but there will be an increasing
> tide of new things that they won't have used. So, I think that the
> opposite is true. As the rate of technology (or at least application)
> advance increases, so will the learning gap. Things are not getting
> simpler. This needs to be taken into account, otherwise exclusion will
> increase.
> 
> 
> [1] http://research.microsoft.com/hci2020/default.html

Yes, I've been thinking about this issue too. However, note that the 
article is restricting itself to "old people who have not used email or 
the Web". In other words, we may still need to design for elderly (or 
less acquainted) computer users but we may assume more older users to 
have basic knowledge of e-mail and the Web than we can assume today; on 
the Web today we often need to deal with the "technology gap" as well as 
with compounded basic Web/computer literacy issues for older citizens.

Thanks for the pointer to the article.

Regards,
   Shadi


-- 
Shadi Abou-Zahra - http://www.w3.org/People/shadi/ |
   WAI International Program Office Activity Lead   |
  W3C Evaluation & Repair Tools Working Group Chair |

Received on Monday, 7 April 2008 13:39:50 UTC