Feedback WAI-AGE Literature Review

Hi all,

Thanks for preparing this very interesting und useful compilation of 
age-related material.

Here my comments and questions:

2.1 Who is an older adult?

I have to confess that i'm not convinced that a clear decision about who 
is an older adult and who is not is very important and neither easy to 
decide. In our experience there are many more other factors who 
influence if people behave like we expect older adults to behave: 
aptitue, health, experience (computer literacy), age of retirement (and 
therefore country of living). and as it was pointed out by william and 
others that this age will increase rapidly in the near and mid term future.

2.4 Attitude and Aptitude

In our experience this seems to be one of the most important factors for 
a very large group of elderly web users. This is also an area where we 
might have matches with learning disablities or limitations in 
processing interaction concepts.

As soon as older people are confronted with non-standard or more complex 
interfaces and interaction you can observe barriers in using those 
interfaces.

Several source are indicating learning aptitudes for older people. 
Concerning the web this might for example show problems with the concept 
of soft keys (keys with changing functionality) or control via cursor 
keys or the like. User tests have shown that elderly web users prefer 
the concept of hard keys (one key with one function). [eg. in 
"Barrierefreie Informationsplattform für Fernsehgeräte / Accessible 
Information Plattform for TV Sets", Pillip von Hellberg et al., 2008]

I was asking myself to what extent technical limitations should be 
considered: we have seen many older users with inappropriate hardware 
(eg. old and slow PCs, small and low quality screens), inappropriate 
working environment (eg. position of keyboard and mouse, lighting 
conditions) or badly configured software. We would call this "technical 
disablities". [eg. in "Haushalte alleinstehender Senioren: Hoffnungs- 
oder Notstandsgebiet für den Einsatz von innovativer Technologie und 
Ambient Assisted Living? / Households of single seniors: chance or ??? 
for usage of innovative technologies and ambient assisted living?" 
Ulrich Becker et al., 2008]


2.5 User requirements for an elderly Web user

I'm not sure what to expect from this chapter, but isn't this more like 
a summary of other chapters? So it might be positioned later in the 
document.


Additional source and references:

* SHARE - Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe
might be a useful source for statistical material

"The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) is a 
multidisciplinary and cross-national panel database of micro data on 
health, socio-economic status and social and family networks of more 
than 30,000 individuals aged 50 or over. Eleven countries have 
contributed data."


AARP Audience-Centered Heuristics: Older Adults
http://www.sigchi.org/chi97/proceedings/short-talk/bm.htm


Designing for older Adults
http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Older-Adults-Arthur-Fisk/dp/0415286115


Are references in german language of any interest/use? I could compile a 
list of a few interesting papers, articles and maybe a few books.


And finally about our current work: we are currently compiling 
design-guidelines for e-commerce websites for people with disabilities 
and elderly people. I'm presenting a short version at ICCHP in July at 
Linz/Austria. A longer version (or a book) will be hopefully available 
by the end of summer, but it will be in German. I'll forward a copy of 
it to Shadi and to all other German speakers in the group as soon as it 
is available. They can decide if it might be of any help for the project 
and we can discuss, what could be translated into English.


regards, michael

-- 
Michael Stenitzer | WIENFLUSS information.design.solutions
www.wienfluss.net | proschkogasse 1/5 | wien06at
fon ++43 650 935877 0 | fax  ++43 1 23680199

Received on Tuesday, 3 June 2008 20:27:36 UTC