The children's use of technology is increasing year by year and recent statistics show that children receive their first smartphone and autonomously navigate the Web when they are 10.3 years old (on average). Nevertheless, while the number of tourism packages for families with children grows, the number of websites that can be directly visited by children is small; more relevant, is the number of tourism applications developed for children. This paper discusses the design of usable and accessible websites for children, and proposes, as a case study, our experience on a dedicated section of the tourism website of a Naturalistic Oasis located close to Treviso, in Italy.
The children use digital devices and begin to navigate on the Web when they are 10.3 years old (on average); furthermore, in each family, their preferences and needs are relevant in the choice of tourism destinations. Nevertheless, there is a scarcity of studies on children travel and of websites, specifically designed for them, based on their own perspectives. In this work, we discuss the importance of conceiving and creating usable and accessible websites for children, and propose guidelines relative to their design, structure, navigation, language, and the gamification. We applied these guidelines two case studies: the first one is a dedicated section of the tourism website of a Naturalistic Oasis located close to Treviso, in Italy, the second one is a website for tourism activities dedicated to families that want to visit the city of Venice, Italy. In both cases, we present experimental results.
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