Improving the quality of life of elderly people is an emerging issue within our information society for both research and development. This paper addresses some issues on the development of applications for mobile devices, which have been designed to enhance the quality of life of the growing number of elderly people, and how they can be made more acceptable to the target population. We summarize some relevant issues in order to devise a research methodology to cover more than just the technological and physical aspects of user interfacing but also psychological and sociological aspects. One aspect of achieving this aim is to confront designers and developers with those problems that the elderly face daily and which are not easily understood -especially by younger designers and developers. Finally, we present some issues on how to simulate certain physical constraints of elderly by using the AgeSim, which is a simulation suit. However, not only physical but also cognitive impairment cause problems amongst elderly and result in fear, anxiety and consequently in rejection. The main goal of this paper is to raise awareness amongst developers on which problems are to be taken into considerations during design and development of mobile applications for the elderly.

In Usability and Accessibility Engineering, metric standards are vital. However, the development of a set of reciprocal metrics-which can serve as an extension of, and supplement to, current standards-becomes indispensable when the specific needs of end-user groups, such as the elderly and people with disabilities, are concerned. While ISO 9126 remains critical to the usability of a product, the needs of the elderly population are forcing the integration of other factors. Familiarity and recognisability are not relevant to someone with no experience and therefore no referent; however, acceptance becomes a major factor in their willingness to learn something new and this acceptance requires trust based on association. Readability and legibility are of less relevance to a blind person than to someone with failing eyesight. This paper describes some usability metrics ascertained on the basis of experiments made with applications for elderly people throughout the summer term of 2007. The factors that influence the older users' acceptance of software, including the extent of their previous exposure to technology, are evaluated in order to provide short guidelines for software developers on how to design and develop software for the elderly. The evaluation of the expectations, behavior, abilities, and limitations of prospective end-users is considered of primary importance for the development of technology. A total of N = 31 participants (22 women/9 men) took part in various tests. The participants' ages ranged from 49 to 96 years with an average age of 79. Five of the tests were designed for a PDA or cellular phone, one test was designed for a laptop PC. Of the total of 55 tests, 52 tests provided sufficient data to evaluate the results. In 23 of the tests, all tasks were completed. As a main outcome, it can be experimentally proved that the acceptance is related to a factor, which is this paper is called PET (Previous Exposure to Technology). This is discussed in light of the aforementioned metrics.Most usability engineering is qualitative: we observe how end users use an application, what they like and what they hate, and if it is really bad we want to change it … if the developers have time [33].

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Abstract. During the last decades, people with disabilities have gained access to Human-Computer Interfaces (HCI); with a resultant impact on their societal inclusion and participation possibilities, standard HCI must therefore be made with care to avoid a possible reduction in this accessibility. Games, considered as a field of research, could provide new interaction principles, which can be incorporated into the existing HCI Standards, thereby complimenting and expanding these standards positively. However, games also provide an interesting new potential for better access and for supporting people with disabilities. They can be used to acclimatize people, who have had little or no exposure to technology, to interaction with modern Information and Computer Technology (ICT). Some simulation games act as an interface between games playing and real life, where the end user, in the form of an avatar, can interact within modern communication systems. It is important to ensure that everyone has accessibility to this technology, regardless of abilities or age. This paper advocates pro-active "research in games accessibility" and provides some first considerations on establishing a) guidelines for accessible game development, b) Active Game Accessibility (AGA) development framework to support game developers and Assistive Technology (AT) providers and c) a collection of games or game scenario examples ("code pattern collection") as a reference for game and AT developers.