Summary:
Designing inclusive or accessible websites has become important because there is a legal requirement to do so in an aging world. Most published works on the topic lack a complete website design, making it difficult for those who may want to learn the art of accessible website design for the elderly impaired to do so. This tutorial comes with complete code for a high quality accessible website and has a bibliography of 140 online and published sources for those who want to investigate this art of designing accessible websites for the elderly impaired.

Details or Sample:
Abstract

The main aim of this research is to present state of the art techniques that can be used in order to develop accessible website, especially for the elderly impaired. The population of elderly citizens has shown a substantial increase around the world, especially in the developed world, where better care for the citizens has increased the average lifespan and there is an expectation for a better quality of life in the society. At the same time, computers and Internet have proliferated and have become a way of life for all, with the World Wide Web not only being a source of learning but also a way to interact with others, communicate and get to know about rapidly changing developments. Websites should be easy to use for all segments of the population including the elderly impaired who as a result of their age, will have deteriorating vision, hearing, memory, locomotion as well as deteriorating cognitive processes which can interfere with their everyday living. Lives of the elderly impaired can be improved by providing them with better web accessibility as a result of incorporating features, design enhancements, better interfaces, appropriate colours and shading as well as techniques for magnifying web pages, adding speech and a number of other techniques. This dissertation takes a look at the methods and techniques which have been developed and reported in literature for the improvement of Internet accessibility and better, easier as well as more user- friendly interaction with websites on the internet for the elderly impaired. Fully functional PHP and MySQL code for a substantial all inclusive website, (Cork Social Inclusion Network, Ireland website), is included. This code is very rare and cannot be found elsewhere on the internet. This write-up comes with 140 references.

Excerpts

The world is aging and the number of elderly citizens continues to increase in many countries especially the developed economies of the world. In the United States alone, there are an estimated 9 million senior citizens above the age of 65 who use the internet and will like to lead active lives with the best possible quality of living. The World Wide Web has seen huge proliferation in recent years and has in fact become an important part of modern living, assisting the users in almost all aspects of life from communication to learning as well as interacting with the rest of the world. With such a large population of elderly citizens living round the globe, special efforts need to be made in order to ensure that they can live their lives to the fullest. In this dissertation, an attempt is made to look at the ways in which internet accessibility may be improved for the elderly, who because of their age will have developed certain impairments. The emphasis is on the development of websites which have built in features that enable the elderly impaired to interact and use these websites with ease.

Elderly users can experience great difficulties when using the Internet and interacting with a website. Not only is their vision getting impaired but there is also an onset of Age Associated Memory Impairment (AAMI), deterioration in hearing, locomotion etc. There is deterioration in “fluid” memory or the ability to solve problems for which there are no solutions derivable from formal training or cultural practices and speaking websites may be designed that speak out instructions along with other design enhancements which can increase the functionality of the elderly web interaction. Functionality of links on the websites can be improved and function keys may be used for easier navigation on the website. Many elderly impaired can also demonstrate a poor conceptual model of the web and hence have to be carefully guided in their initial explorations with the hope that as a result of ongoing interactions with the Internet and the web, their understanding of concepts and functionality will improve. Well thought website design can also reduce and eliminate the frustration and inadequacy that will be felt by the elderly and impaired when they attempt to interact with a well designed website on the World Wide Web, making the interaction a pleasure and joy as a result of achievement.

Voice XML is useful software tool for incorporating voice applications into the website for the elderly impaired but it has some problems that have been reported. The coding is simple and it can be incorporated into a XHTML web page as shown below, but there are problems with ‘Voice Browsers’ as they are difficult to get and that Voice XML is more appropriate for telephony applications then for incorporation for voice presentations in websites for the elderly impaired.

// The application looks to the root path, which has been previously
// defined, and then saves the result in a variable called
// $folder. It takes the new value of the folder of where it
// wants to go and saves that path in $folder.
$folder = substr($_SERVER["SCRIPT_FILENAME"], strlen($root_path));
$folder = substr($folder, 0, strpos($folder, ’/’));

A.1.2 library.php
//declare the server root path
$root_path = ’c:/phpdev/www/phpfiles/’;
//declare the site folders - array
$folders = array( ’home’ => ’Home’,
’edu’ => ’Education & Info’,
’chat’ => ’Chat Room’,
’map’ => ’Interactive Map’,
’help’ => ’Help’,
’about’ => ’About’ );
// find out which folder i am in e.g. home
$folder =

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