How web accessibility guidelines apply to design for the ageing population

There has been extensive development of guidelines for accessibility of the Web for people with disabilities. While these guidelines address many requirements needed by the ageing population, the relevance of these guidelines to the needs of the ageing population is not well understood by many organizations representing and/or serving the needs of the ageing community nor by technology developers. There is a need to better understand the relationship and overlap of the requirements, and to develop educational resources to help developers provide Web sites that work better for people who experience changes in abilities due to ageing.

One of the key aspects of ageing is a development of functional limitations such as declines in vision, dexterity, and hearing. Additionally, we find various declines in cognitive ability, and these may be as likely, or more likely, to affect the use of ICT and the Web than physical and sensory limitations in older adults. In addition to the diversity in functional ability of older adults, we need be aware of the diversity of attitude and aptitude, when we are discussing the use of ICT and the Web.

This paper introduces the “Web Accessibility Initiative: Ageing Education and Harmonisation” (WAI-AGE) project, a W3C Web Accessibility Initiative project that is funded by the European Commission under its 6th Framework Programme of the Information Society Technologies. A significant part of this work includes researching existing literature with regard to information technology access, and comparing the findings with solutions provided by the Web Accessibility Initiative.

This reflective paper will report on the findings from the literature review and the synergies with the existing WAI guidelines.