Technology has advanced a lot in recent years, yet even obvious things like websites still have several shortcomings that cause problems. This is especially true for older people. They make up a large part of the population, having user and shopping potential on the web.
As part of our A Respectful Web project, we have tried to identify these issues and extend the accessibility rules to include “respectful rules” that precisely targets the needs of elderly. We came to our solution through our own research consisting of qualitative interviews with older people, their family members, a study of available scientific papers and user testing of an existing e-shop (online shopping was identified to be one of the biggest challenge for the elderly on the web).
The research revealed 14 specific rules for UX designers, which allow them to design more accessible sites for elderly. These rules are available on the microsite that covers the project and can also be printed in the form of an A4 checklist.
By using the Respectful rules, we also redesigned the e-shop mentioned above and repeated the user testing in order to verify the benefits of the rules for older people. The result of testing showed us a significant acceleration in the performance of the task (by 31% in average) and a better understanding of the structure of the e-shop.
