Developing and evaluating web-based assistive technologies for older adults
A.G. Money, S. Fernando, L. Lines, A.D. Elliman
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AbstractDelivering Inclusive Access to Disabled and Elderly Members of the community (DIADEM) is a three year Framework 6 European Union (EU) funded project. The primary goal is to develop the DIADEM application, a plug-in to a web browser that adapts the online-form interface according to users’ needs, making the content more accessible for cognitively impaired older adults. After providing some background information relating to the DIADEM project and the DIADEM application, a trial protocol is presented. As one of the main contributions of this paper, the protocol has been specifically designed to identify cognitively impaired older-adults and to evaluate the usability of online-form content from an older adult user’s perspective. To demonstrate the applicability of the trial protocol within the context of an ongoing research project, details of a set of pan-European trials involving 77 eligible users, who evaluated DIADEM enabled online-forms according to the trial protocol, are also presented. Results of the trials reveal a number of online-form design guidelines, which will be incorporated into future versions of the DIADEM application. Although these guidelines have been developed specifically for the DIADEM application, they also represent valuable guidelines for online-form developers more generally, and if adhered to, will ensure that content is more usable for the cognitively impaired older adult user group. This paper concludes by discussing the lessons learned from implementing the trial protocol and how the implications of the findings of the DIADEM user trials may be incorporated into future versions of the DIADEM application.Keywords: accessibility; e-government; older adults; online-forms
A.G. Money, S. Fernando, L. Lines, A.D. Elliman (2009). Developing and evaluating web-based assistive technologies for older adults. Gerontechnology, 8(3), 165-177
https://doi.org/10.4017/gt.2009.08.03.013.00