Notes

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

@@ A Power Point presentation version of this material is also available [tba]

Permission and Reference

If you plan to use this material for a presentation, please let us know by sending an email to wai-eo-editors@w3.org (a publicly-archived list), or if you do not want it public send it to wai@w3.org. Following your presentation, we would appreciate knowing how many people attended, what questions they had, and how it was received. We also welcome your feedback and suggestions for the presentation.

The "Web Accessibility for Older Users" presentation material is copyright© W3C and licensed under the W3C Document License, with the exception of some of the images. Additionally, you are granted permission to create modifications or derivatives of the material.

All that means that you can copy, change, translate, distribute, and present the "Web Accessibility for Older Users" presentation material as long as you include the reference information below as source material:

Web Accessibility for Older Users, A.M.J. Arch, ed. W3C (MIT, ERCIM, Keio), February 2009. www.w3.org/WAI/WAI-AGE/@@@@

Images

Credits for the images and information, and permission to use any images, are included in the Notes section where the image or data first appears.

Note to presenters:

• Some people may not be able to see the slides, for example, people who are blind or people listening to an audio-only recording of the presentation. Make sure that you say all of the information that is on each slide.
• Speak slowly and clearly - some participants may not be fluent in your spoken language; some may have difficulty with your accent; some may be relying on a sign-language interpreter.
• An appendix contains additional demographic slides that might be more relevant to your audience than the ones currently included. if appropriate, substitute material from the appendix for some of the existing demographic material.

@@ check Outline bullets from this slide when document finished

Notes

Today I'll be talking about the WAI-AGE project that is looking at the requirements of older people using the Web.

The presentation will introduce the project, talk about the changing worldwide demographic situation, introduce some of the findings from a literature review, highlight some of the requirements of older users, and talk about the current activities of the project.

Notes

The Web Accessibility Initiative: Ageing Education and Harmonisation (WAI-AGE) project is funded as a European Commission IST Specific Support Action with the goal of increasing accessibility of the Web for the elderly as well as for people with disabilities in European Union Member States.

The project is specifically intended to:

• develop a better understanding of the needs of the ageing population in the context of existing Web accessibility guidelines
• work with the ageing community to obtain more direct contribution into W3C/WAI work
• revise existing educational materials to better reflect the needs of the ageing population, and develop new materials
• pursue standards coordination to promote adoption and implementation of a common set of guidelines

Much more information is available from the Project page at www.w3.org/WAI/WAI-AGE/

Let's first look at the motivations behind this project ... changing demographics and ageing-related impairments [next slide]

Notes

The United Nations has forecast that "Globally, the number of persons aged 60 years or over is expected nearly to triple, increasing from 673 million in 2005 to 2 billion by 2050" while at the same time, the total population is only forecast to increase by 40%. They also state that "Today, about half of the oldest-old [those over 80 years] live in developing countries but that share is expected to reach 71 per cent in 2050". At the same time, they expect the working-age population to decline by 5%.

Note to presenters:
Several slides are provided in the Appendix with specific country demographic forecasts for you to select from
- you will probably just select one or two.
The point to emphasize is that the population is getting older.

Note: The UN defines 'working-age' as 15-59 years while Europe uses 16-65 years.

UN References:

http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/wpp2006/WPP2006_Highlights_rev.pdf

http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/wpp2006/wpp2006_ageing.pdf

Notes

In the European Union, the EU-27 group of countries are predicted to to have nearly 30% of its population over 65 years by 2050, up from 17% in 2010 to 20% in 2020, 24% in 2030, and 27% in 2040. The proportion of older-old (those over 80) will also increase - from 5% in 2010 to 12% in 2050.

Many countries will experience different changes from this - some are forecast to have greater proportions of older people, others to have lower proportions of their populations over 65 years. For example Ireland is forecast to grow from 11% in 2010 to just 24% in 2050, while Italy is forecast to grow from 23% in 2010 to 33% in 2050.

Other countries will also experience greater growth - for example, Japan is expected to have 1/3 of its population over 65 years within 30 years!

Note to presenters:

• Several slides are provided in the Appendix with specific country demographic forecasts for you to select from as alternatives or additions to this slide.
• You are not expected to show all the demographic slides provided.
• You may like to just show your own country instead of this European situation, or to contrast your own country with Europe or another country.

References:

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_OFFPUB/KS-SF-08-072/EN/KS-SF-08-072-EN.PDF (PDF) for 65+ and 90+
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page?_pageid=0,1136184,0_45572595&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL for 50+

Definitions:

"EU-27" represents the 27 countries that comprised the EU as at 1 January 2007

Notes

This table highlights the forecast differences across Europe over the next four decades between the numbers of older people and those in the so-called working age group.

In 2005, most countries were close to the EU average of 1 person over 65 for every four of working age (1:4).

The EU average in 2010 will be 26%, forecast to rise to 38% in 2030 and 50% in 2050.
Some individual countries within the EU vary considerably from the average.
[e.g. in 2030, Netherlands - 37%, Austria - 41%, and Italy - 45% compared with the EU-27 average of 40%]

These forecast changes between older people and younger people over the next few decades show that the older group is going to be more significant and emphasizes the need to:

1. support older people in the workplace (note that many EU countries are currently raising the retirement age and people are also choosing to work longer) and
2. support older people in the community

An accessible Web contributes to this.

Note to presenters:
European presenters may like to extract the percentages for their own country

Reference:

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_OFFPUB/KS-SF-08-072/EN/KS-SF-08-072-EN.PDF (PDF)
(see also the Eurostat Yearbook [PDF])

Definitions:

The EuroStat term of "old age dependency ratio" is the ratio of the population aged 65 and over as a % of the working-age population

"working-age population" is defined by EuroStat as people between 16 and 64 years of age (UN definition is 15-60 years)

"EU-27" represents the 27 countries that comprised the EU as at 1 January 2007

NB. Two slides about "Ageing and Functional Impairments" are provided - this one shows statistical information about the prevalence of various impairments, the following shows the impacts. Select only one depending on your audience. For example, an audience of managers might be more interested in the statistical prevalence; an audience of developers might be more interested in the impairment impacts they need to accommodate.

Notes

Impairment often accompanies the ageing process - vision loss, hearing loss, motor skill diminishment, cognitive decline.

Vision decline often starts in a person's mid-40s. It affects 16% of people 65 to 74 years, but 46% of those over 85 years. In older people 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 red and yellows than blues and greens and often making darker blues and black indistinguishable
• Pupil shrinkage - resulting in the need for more light
• Decreasing contrast sensitivity - an 80 year old typically has 80% less contrast sensitivity than a 20 year old

Hearing starts to decline at around 50 years, affecting 19% of people 61 to 80 years but 75% of people over 81 years.

Motor skill diminishment includes arthritis, with joint stiffening, and Parkinson's Disease, with associated hand trembling, making mouse use difficult or impossible for some. Arthritis is estimated to affect at least 50% of people over 65.

Cognitive impairment is also common. While Dementia affects part of the older population (1.4% of people 65-69 years increasing to 24% of people over 85 years), forms of mild cognitive impairment (or MCI) are much more common affecting over 20% of those over 70 years. MCI can result in:

• problems with short term memory (which may result in a person forgetting the purpose of a web site visit if they get "lost" on the site)
• concentration and distraction issues also common (consider the multiple animated advertisements that appear on some pages)

These statistics, and other information, show that ageing-related impairments commonly start to be experienced from around 50 years of age (i.e. while most people are still in employment) and also that there is a significant increase in the proportion who experience these impairments after around 80 years of age.

Note to presenters:

• Depending on the audience, the following slide discussing the impacts of ageing related impairments may be more relevant that this one with prevalence statistics
• For a short presentation, remove the bulleted lists and speak very briefly to the main areas of vision, hearing, motor skills, and cognition.
  
• More detailed data is available from Web Accessibility for Older Users: A Literature Review

Notes

NB. Two slides about "Ageing and Functional Impairments" are provided - this one shows the impacts various impairments, the following shows statistical information about their prevalence. Select only one depending on your audience. For example, an audience of managers might be more interested in the statistical prevalence; an audience of developers might be more interested in the impairment impacts they need to accommodate.

Impairment often accompanies the ageing process - vision loss, hearing loss, motor skill diminishment, cognitive decline.

Vision decline often starts in a person's mid-40s.

Hearing often starts to decline at around 50 years

Arthritis (one form of motor skill diminishment) is estimated to affect at least 50% of people over 65.

Cognitive impairment is also common. While Dementia affects part of the older population (1.4% of people 65-69 years increasing to 24% of people over 85 years), forms of mild cognitive impairment (or MCI) are much more common.

Prevalence statistics show that ageing-related impairments commonly start to be experienced from around 50 years of age (i.e. while most people are still in employment) and also that there is a significant increase in the proportion who experience these impairments after around 80 years of age.

Note to presenters:
For a short presentation, remove the bulleted lists and speak very briefly to the main areas of vision, hearing, motor skills, and cognition.
More detailed data is available from Web Accessibility for Older Users: A Literature Review

Notes

These previous statistics are leading to working ages being extended, and with that goes lifelong learning, but with the issue of age-related impairments being increasingly experienced.

At the same time all forms of community participation are going online, and participation is expected and being encouraged ... [read list]

Older people are expected and wanting to participate, and are being encouraged and supported to do so if they aren't online already.

What have we found about older people and their Web accessibility requirements?

Notes

To better understand the needs of the ageing population, the WAI-AGE Project undertook an extensive Literature Review. This review included a broad range of literature including scientific papers and popular articles. The range of literature reviewed included those that ... [read out the bulleted list]

Notes

In reviewing the literature, the Project found that:

• disability and impairment issues relating to older users were not well understood by industry or by users themselves
• there was a strong tendency in much of the literature to 'reinvent the wheel' and not build on previous work
• some recommendations reflected a lack of technical knowledge, e.g.
  • some recommendations suggested that it was not good to have users double-click (something that is unnecessary on the Web)
  • most of the literature ignored the possibility of browser adaptation or the use of assistive technology
• there was a very apparent lack of mention of the work of W3C and the Web Accessibility Initiative with most studies not drawing on the experience of previous work relating to people with disabilities using the Web
• very few articles considered the use of adaptive strategies (such as changing browser color and text size) or assistive technologies by older users

Notes

Many of the requirements for making websites accessible to people with disabilities match the requirements of older users:

• text
  • Font can affect ease of reading - studies have shown a slight preference for a sans serif font onscreen
  • Size - many older people require a minimum of 12 or 14 pt text, many require larger still, so an ability to increase it from the designers setting is essential
  • Contrast - having a suitably high contrast for text (and other important information)
  • Color - color perception changes with age and color loss can occur; fluorescent colors should be avoided and an adjustable color scheme can be desirable
• links - clearly identified from the regular text and clearly identifying the link destination
• headings - clearly standing out from the text, and clearly identifying the sections to follow
• navigation - to ensure users know where they are going
• orientation - so users know where they and where they can go

WCAG 2.0 addresses these requirements

See WAI Guidelines and Older Web Users: Findings from a Literature Review for full details of coverage.

Notes

Usability features also overlap with the requirements of people with disabilities

• text presentation - sans-serif seems preferred with left justification (for left to right texts), increased line-spacing, and avoiding italics, underlining, etc
• layout - consistent layout across the site (and consistent with other sites) to aid recognition and familiarity
• forms - grouping like questions; making compulsory fields very obvious; giving examples; providing clear error messages and help
• Predictability, consistency and tolerance - meeting users expectations as to how a web site is presented and behaves, consistency in the menus and links, downloading links clearly identified. Furthermore, fly-out and pull-down menus can be difficulty for older people, especially with fine motor control difficulties, to utilize.

WCAG 2.0 covers more usability requirements than previously - this will assist older people and people with disabilities

See WAI Guidelines and Older Web Users: Findings from a Literature Review for full details of coverage.

[Read out the slide - it gives examples of WCAG advisory techniques that are particularly important to some older people]

Some of these techniques could be addressed via the browser ... [see next slide]

 

Note to presenters:
...

Notes

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 many of them wanted a browser with additional features as their familiarity and experience grew. The lack of studies discussing adaptive strategies like changing text size or color schemes suggests that browsers could make these accommodation 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 accommodate the impairments they may be being experienced.

In other situations, older people may not notice changes that occur within a page due to a condition described as "change blindness".

The Web is also about contributing as well receiving information. The rise of online office-style applications and social networking and resource sharing opportunities is as attractive to older people as it is to younger people. However, older people with impairments experience many of the same problems as people with disabilities in accessing some of these newer Web developments.

The User agent Accessibility Guidelines, WAI's Accessible Rich Internet Applications, and the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines can help make the learning process easier and Web interactions better.

More information on WAI guidelines:

• Essential Components of Web Accessibility - http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/components.php
• User Agent Accessibility Guidelines - http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/uaag.html
• WAI Accessible Rich Internet Applications - http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/aria.php
• Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines - http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/atag.php

Notes

Some other observations were made from the literature:

• 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
• with declining memory and concentration common among older people, information overload was a problem that many observers reported, with many pages containing more information than some people could assimilate
• most of the articles considered the experiential usability factors of a website; very few considered the technical, or coding, aspects that may also assist
• online forms were criticized heavily by some, with suggestions made for improvements such as grouping of material, and error reporting
• although hearing decline is common among older people, very few studies looked at the implications of this impairment

 

Notes

The project has been interacting with WAI Working groups and providing some ideas for consideration in forthcoming guidelines or as techniques for existing guidelines.

One of the identified issues has been the duplication of work in this area and the potential for divergence. The propjet has found that older people and people with disabilities have a lot of requirements in common and we need to encourage the researchers, developers and community to work more closely together for an accessible web.

Much of the remainder of the project will concentrate on incorporating the requirements of older people into existing WAI documents and developing new documents to help promote the need for including older people as well as people with disabilities during the development of websites and web applications.

Notes

WAI has Working Groups developing accessibility guidelines and related work, and Interest Groups providing a forum for discussing Web accessibility issues.

The Authoring tools working group develops guidelines, techniques, and supporting resources for Web "authoring tools" (the software that creates Web sites, including the content management systems, blogs, and social networking websites)

The User Agent working group develops guidelines, techniques, and supporting resources for Web "user agents" (including Web browsers and media players)

The Web Content (WCAG) working group develops guidelines, techniques, and supporting resources for Web "content" (the information in a Web site, including text, images, forms, sounds, and such, as well as the interactivity) and released WCAG 2.0 at the end of 2008.

These three sets of guidelines are crucial for the future of an accessible Web. For Web users the content is important (WCAG), but that content has to be created appropriately (ATAG), and the content has to be accessed (UAAG).

Other groups are involved in Evaluation Tools, Education and Outreach, and Research and Development - see the working groups website for details (http://www.w3.org/WAI/groups.html).

Notes

Many existing WAI documents will benefit from having the needs of older users more explicitly considered. These include:

• the Web Accessibility Business Case is being expanded to incorporate more benefits related to the ageing population
  • Draft business case revision
• the Before and After Demonstration pages are being updated to incorporate more requirements of older users
• Involving Users is being expanded to incorporate older users, and to consider the complete development process

New resources are planned to build on the Project's findings and the benefits of WCAG 2.0. These include:

• Improving your Web Experience by Using Adaptive Strategies - provides a general introduction to the use of adaptive strategies and assistive technologies with an emphasis on the needs of older users
• Contacting Organizations with Inaccessible Web Sites - will suggest different options for contacting organizations which have inaccessible Web sites
  • Draft of Contacting Organizations
• Overlapping Relationship Between Web Accessibility and Usability - will explore the overlap within the context of the needs of older users

The planned revisions are all discussed at http://www.w3.org/WAI/WAI-AGE/deliverables.html

Notes

Anyone interested in this topic is invited to:

• monitor the Project (new outputs will be announced on the Project page - www.w3.org/WAI/WAI-AGE)
• comment on the documents while they are being developed
• participate in the Project task force or one of the WAI working groups
• undertake some research to fill in some gaps in our understanding (see next slide)

Note to presenters:

• Depending on your audience, you may not want to show the following 'research' slide, so just mention a couple of areas
• Please help us improve this present ion by giving us feedback on what worked and what might be improved - that can be one of your ways of contributing to the project. Consider asking the audience for feedback afterwards too.

Notes

Some of the gaps in our understanding of the requirements of older people using the Web relate to:

• Hearing loss and multimedia - benefits of captions and/or transcripts
• Cognitive decline - impact of Mild Cognitive Impairment, including short-term memory loss and distractibility, on website site use
• Text decoration and fonts - what font weight is preferable?
• Navigation and menu preference - deep versus shallow navigation for ease of comprehension
• Small page changes - are AJAX-driven small page updates noticed? How can they be made more obvious?
• Social networking - what improvements to these sites might be required to better accommodate older users?

Note to presenters:
Depending on your audience, this slide may not be relevant.

 

Notes

Note to presenters:
Before asking for questions, please mention that the WAI-AGE Project is a European Commission IST Specific Support Action funded by Sixth Framework Programme.