Notes

[NOTES SECTION This is where the important information is: for each slide.]

This material is also available in other presentation formats from https://www.w3.org/WAI/presentations/ageing/

Notes

Today I'll be talking about web accessibility and older people, based on findings provided by the W3C WAI-AGE Project in 2010, that are still relevant today.

The presentation will discuss the prevalence and impact of age-related limitations and older people's use of the Web; introduce some of the findings from a literature review carried out in 2010; highlight some of the requirements of older users and the role of WAI accessibility guidelines in meeting these; and talk about the current activities at W3C.

Notes

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium where organizations located all over the world, and involved in many different fields, join W3C to participate in a vendor-neutral forum for the creation of web standards. Member organizations include technology companies, telecommunications companies, universities, government departments, and user organizations. Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public, work together to develop open and royalty free standards for the Web.

W3C's mission is to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web.

This is about ensuring that the evolution of the Web is for everyone, everywhere, on everything. W3C operates from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) in France, Keio University in Japan, and Beihang University in China.

Key web technologies developed are through a multi-stakeholder and consensus-oriented process. These technologies include HTML, CSS, XML, SVG, SMIL, and many more that are used by developers to create websites and web software.

W3C also engages in education and outreach and serves as an open forum for discussion about the Web. In order for the Web to reach its full potential, the most fundamental web technologies must be compatible with one another and allow any hardware and software used to access the Web to work together.

Notes

Within the W3C, the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) operates fully under the W3C process and pursues accessibility of the Web for people with disabilities through five primary activities:

• Ensuring that core technologies of the Web (such as HTML, CSS, XML etc) support accessibility
• Developing guidelines for web content, user agents (browsers and media players), and authoring tools (editors and content management systems)
• Facilitating development of evaluation and repair tools and methods for accessibility
• Conducting education and outreach, to raise awareness and promote understanding
• Coordinating with research and development that can affect future accessibility of the Web.

People with disabilities include older people who experience age related functional changes and are rapidly increasing as a proportion of the population in most countries as the following slides indicate.

Notes

These figures are from a study carried out by the WAI-AGE Project in 2010, but are still relevant today.

Hearing starts to decline at around 50 years and affects a person's ability to hear higher pitched sounds as well as discern the foreground from background audio such as music or other sounds.

Some hearing loss is experienced by 47% of people 61 to 80 years and 93% of people over 81 years.

Moderate or severe hearing loss or profound deafness is experienced by 20% of people aged 61 - 80 and 75% of people over 80.

References:

• Previous version of this presentation contains specific references.

Notes

These figures are from a study carried out by the WAI-AGE Project in 2010, but are still relevant today.

Vision decline includes:

• Decreasing ability to focus on near tasks, including a computer screen
• Changing color perception and sensitivity - less violet light is registered, making it easier to see reds and yellows than blues and greens, and often making dark blue and black indistinguishable
• Decreasing contrast sensitivity from pupil shrinkage - resulting in the need for more light and higher contrast (an 80 year old typically has 80% less contrast sensitivity than a 20 year old)

Vision decline often starts in a person's mid-40s with 86% of Australians over 40 requiring reading glasses to correct for near vision. Significant vision loss (that can't be corrected) affecting everyday life is estimated to affect 16% of people 65 to 74 years, and 46% of those over 85 years in the UK.

References:

• Previous version of this presentation contains specific references.

Definitions:

• Significant sight loss in the UK is estimated using <6/18 as a measure of visual acuity
• Presbyopia - the condition where the eye exhibits a progressively diminished ability to focus on near objects with age

Notes

These figures are from a study carried out by the WAI-AGE Project in 2010, but are still relevant today.

Motor skill decline impacts on dexterity and can result from many conditions, for example arthritis with associated joint stiffening and reduced fine motor control, and essential tremor or Parkinson's Disease with associated hand trembling, making mouse use difficult or impossible for some and also affecting keyboard use. In particular, older people with physical impairments may have difficulty clicking small links, selecting radio buttons, and using many fly-out or pull-down menus.

Arthritis is estimated to affect at least 50% of people over 65; essential tremor (one of many forms of tremor) is estimated to affect up to 5% of those over 40 and up to 20% of people over 65; and Parkinson's affects around 4% of those over 85.

References:

• Previous version of this presentation contains specific references.

Notes

These figures are from a study carried out by the WAI-AGE Project in 2010, but are still relevant today.

Cognitive decline is also common, though only dementia and mild cognitive impairment are commonly reported. While Dementia (including Alzheimer's disease) is experienced by some older people (1.4% of people 65-69 years increasing to 24% of people over 85 years in the UK), forms of mild cognitive impairment (or MCI) are much more common, affecting over 20% of those over 70 years. MCI can result in:

• Short term memory limitations (which may result in a person forgetting the purpose of a website visit if they lose orientation on the site)
• Concentration and distraction issues (consider the volume of information on some pages, and the multiple animated advertisements that are sometimes present)

References:

• Previous version of this presentation contains specific references.

Notes

With the proportion of older people growing rapidly, the Web is increasingly important to enable older people to remain active and to participate equally. In particular, the Web enables older people to:

• Maintain and extend social networks (email communication is often the starting point for those new to the Web)
• Access commercial services online, including product research, shopping and banking, that can become more difficult to access in person as result of mobility issues
• Access government information, services and civic participation
• Access news, sport, travel, health and other information
• Find employment and access employment-related web applications during their later working life (retirement ages are being raised)
• Access training and learning opportunities - professionally or for leisure and hobbies
• Continue to live in their own homes, ensuring that they keep their independence for longer

Notes

Additional resources about older people online include:

• Previous version of this presentation contains specific references.

Notes

The demographic forecasts and the age-related impairment statistics show an increasingly older population. As seen, many of these older people are likely to experience impairments, sometimes multiple impairments, that will impact on their web use.

In the next sections we will see that older people are experiencing barriers preventing them from accessing the Web due to:

• Poor design and poor coding of websites, including information and applications on the Web
• Complex software, including browsers, media players, and assistive technologies, as well as authoring tools (these are editors, content management systems, blogs, wikis, and the like)
• Little or no prior experience with computers, though this is changing rapidly (see note below)
• These figures are from a study carried out by the WAI-AGE Project in 2010, but are still relevant today.

Result: Web accessibility is an imperative in our information society, to overcome these barriers and ensure equal access for all citizens.

Notes

This literature review was carried out by the WAI-AGE Project in 2010, but the findings are still relevant today.

To better understand the accessibility needs of older web users, the WAI-AGE Project undertook (in 2010) an extensive literature review. This review included over 150 resources including scientific papers and popular articles. The range of literature reviewed included those that discussed:

• Impairments associated with ageing
• Website design requirements for older people
• Implications of particular impairments on web use
• Older users' interaction with particular aspects of websites

Throughout all this literature was the strong sense that older people were enthusiastic about being online, though some didn't see the benefit before being online. There are now lots of "success stories" about older people using social networks, interacting with society via blogs etc, shopping and banking online, and much more, in addition to the majority who just use it regularly like younger people do.

Notes

This literature review was carried out by the WAI-AGE Project in 2010, but the findings are still relevant today.

In reviewing the literature and analyzing the findings and recommendations, WAI-AGE Project found a large overlap between the identified needs of older users and the WAI recommendations, particularly WCAG 2.0. However, it was also observed that:

• The work of W3C and the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) was rarely mentioned -- most studies did not draw on the experience of previous work relating to people with disabilities using the Web
• There was a strong tendency in much of the literature to "reinvent the wheel" and not build on previous work
• Many older people are still new to the Web, especially among the "older old", and have not had the opportunity to become familiar with computers and the Web:
  • This inexperience is currently an influencing factor in many of the studies discussed in the literature review (though it should be noted that many of these studies were undertaken during the late 1990's or early 2000's before the numbers of older people online had grown significantly)
  • Inexperience impacts browser use as well as website use
  • Inexperience is likely to diminish as a factor as more older people use the Web
• Information overload was a problem that many observers reported:
  • Many pages containing more information than some people could assimilate
  • In other situations people became distracted by information not relevant to the task they started
• Most of the articles considered the usability factors of a website, and only very few considered the technical or coding aspects that may also assist users
• Online forms were criticized heavily by some investigators -- some publications suggested improvements such as grouping material and clear error reporting

Definition:

"older old" are considered as the group of people over 80 years (or sometimes over 85).

Notes

WAI-AGE Project made some other observations from the literature review:

• Disability and impairment issues relating to older web users were not well understood by industry and accessibility issues were not well understood by users themselves
• Very few articles considered the use of adaptive strategies (such as changing browser color and text size, or link tabbing) by older users
• Assistive technology has the potential to help some older users, yet none of the studies investigated this aspect of web accessibility, nor looked at older people with disabilities (already be using assistive technologies) who might be experiencing additional age-related impairments
• Some recommendations reflected a lack of technical knowledge, for example
  • Some recommendations suggested that it was not good to have users double-click (not required on the Web)
  • Most of the literature ignored the possibility of adaptive strategies or the use of assistive technology
• Although hearing decline is common among older people, very few studies looked at the implications of this impairment or discussed the use of captions with video

All these observations have implications for ongoing work and also suggest some research needed to fill gaps in our understanding and knowledge.

The implications of the analysis and observations are discussed in the following slides ...

Notes

Web accessibility depends on several components working together:

• The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) explain how to make web content, including text, images, and multimedia accessible to people with disabilities
• The User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG) explain how to make user agents (browsers and media players) accessible to people with disabilities, particularly to increase accessibility to web content
• The Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) explain how authoring tools (editors, content management systems, blogs, wikis, and such) should help web developers produce accessible web content, and how to create authoring tools that are accessible for people with disabilities

These accessibility requirements are also applicable to the accessibility needs of users with ageing-related impairments as the the following slides will describe ...

References:

• Essential Components of Web Accessibility

Definitions:

• "Web content" generally refers to the information and applications on the Web, including text, images, forms, sounds, markup coding, scripts, etc.
• "User agents" are software applications that display the web content to users. These include browsers and media players
• "Authoring tools" are software used to create web content and include editors, content management systems (CMS), wikis, blogs, forums, social networking applications, and any other application that allows you to create or generate content on the Web

Notes

WAI-AGE Project found that many of the suggested requirements for making websites accessible to people with disabilities match the requirements of older users:

Text

Font choice can affect ease of reading - studies have shown a slight preference for a sans serif font onscreen

Size - many older people require larger font size, so an ability to increase the text size is essential

Contrast - providing a suitably high contrast for text and other important information

Color - not relying on color as an indicator of information such as which words are links or which form elements are required, e.g. blue links that are not underlined are indistinguishable from black text for many older people

Links

Clearly distinguished from the regular text and identifying the link destination or purpose

Headings

Clearly standing out from the text, and clearly identifying the sections to follow

Orientation and navigation

To help users know where they are in a website and where they can go

WAI's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 addresses these requirements.

See WAI Guidelines and Older Web Users: Findings from a Literature Review for details on how WCAG 2.0 covers the needs of older users.

Notes

Usability improvements that particularly help older web users also help people with disabilities:

• Layout - consistent layout across the site (and consistent with other sites) to aid recognition and familiarity
• Text presentation - left justification (for left to right texts), increased line-spacing, use of proper case, and avoidance of italics, underlining, and other text decoration can make reading easier
• Forms - providing instruction, grouping like questions, making required fields obvious, giving examples, and providing clear error messages and assisting with error recovery
• Predictability and consistency - meeting users' expectations about how a website is presented and behaves, consistent menus and links, and clearly indicating links.

These usability aspects benefit many other users too and are also included in WCAG 2.0, sometimes as advisory techniques to help optimize web content to specific user groups.

References:

• WAI Guidelines and Older Web Users: Findings from a Literature Review has details of WCAG 2.0 coverage.

Notes

Browsers play the key role in accessing the Web - they are the entry point.

However, many older people, and especially the older-old (over 85 years), are often new to computers and the Web - facing a steep learning curve. While this situation will decline as more older people come online and gain experience, it is still a contributing factor at present. Some studies of training older people in web use found that a simplified browser interface aided learning and understanding, though some wanted a browser with additional features as their familiarity and experience grew.

The low numbers of studies discussing adaptive strategies like changing text size or color schemes suggests that browsers could make these adaptations more obvious and available to users. Trainers and supporters of older people online need more information about how to adapt the user agent, or even the operating system, to adjust the interface for the age-related impairments that may be being experienced. Some browsers do not even work with some assistive technologies, reducing users' choice.

WAI's User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG) explains how developers can provide browsers and media players that support accessibility and can interact with assistive technologies. This includes improvements that can help simplify the learning process and improve the web experience.

Notes

The Web is also about contributing as well receiving information - being an "author" as well as a "user".

Many people who are still in the workforce experience age-related impairments. These people may be required to contribute to their employer's website and intranet. Hence, the content management systems (CMS) and authoring tools used within an organization need to be accessible themselves and need to create content that is accessible for others.

User-generated content via wikis, blogs, reviews, etc is rapidly increasing. Older users are increasingly using online office-style applications, social networking, and photo sharing applications. Older people with impairments have many of the same problems as people with disabilities in accessing some of these newer web developments because they are not developed to be accessible.

Older people are also involved in developing and maintaining websites - either professionally or for leisure and personal use.

Notes

People can actively contribute by:

• Providing feedback and comments on working drafts
• Translate, use, and promote, the existing materials
• Participating in discussions via GitHub developer platform
• Actively participate in W3C/WAI working groups

See Participating in WAI for WAI participation details.

Notes

More information on web accessibility is provided on the WAI home page located at <https://www.w3.org/WAI/>.
The WAI-AGE Project was funded by the European Commission (EC) under the IST Sixth Framework Programme (FP6).

Material for this presentation is provided by WAI at <https://www.w3.org/WAI/presentations/ageing/>.