Developing Online Community Accessibility Guidelines for Persons With Disabilities and Older Adults

Abstract

As online communities have become an important means of social interaction and community participation, ensuring their universal accessibility is essential for social inclusion. Although accessibility standards have been developed to make information-oriented Web sites more inclusive to users with disabilities and older adults, similar efforts have not been devoted to accessibility standards tailored specifically for online communities that are primarily communication oriented. Existing guidelines for Web site accessibility can be used as the starting point in designing accessible online communities for persons with disabilities and older adults, and public policy needs to play a significant role in ensuring the accessibility of the Web 2.0 environment. To ensure full accessibility of the online environment, however, it is necessary to move beyond guidelines that focus on one-way transfer of information and to develop guidelines for multidirectional communication. This article explores the social, policy, and developmental issues of the accessibility of online communities.

Social Media Use of Older Adults: A Mini-Review

“…Additionally, there is (1) a lack of systematic knowledge on the effects of user interface design on user acceptance and actual use of social media of older adults, especially with regard to universal design concepts and accessibility issues [15], and (2) a lack of systematic investigations on how social media is perceived in the context of other web content. Recent studies have investigated single national and international social networks and online communities that are intended either to be used by the general population (e.g.…”

The Relationship between Online Social Networking and Offline Social Participation among People with Disability in Lithuania

“…Earlier studies show that social networks decrease the barriers of interpersonal discourse and communication and are highly functional for people who for various reasons struggle to maintain strong social networks (Ellison et al, 2007). However, scholars do not share a one-sided perspective on the utility of the internet and OSN for people with disabilities Some scholars points to the positive changes that internet communications bring to people with disabilities, (Grimaldi & Goette, 1999;Richard et al, 2008;Jaeger & Xie, 2009;Bricout & Baker, 2010;Forman et al, 2011;Gage, 2013), while other scholars offer more pessimistic findings on the exaggerated usefulness of ITC and point to the unresolved issue of the digital divide that is not solved by access to internet alone (Roulstone, 1998;Oliver, Barnes, Tomas, 2001;Goggin & Newell, 2003;Harris, 2010).…”

Usability Testing by Older Americans of a Prototype Google Map Web Site To Select Nursing Homes

“…While this study was not designed to investigate how participants' psychological or physiological abilities might affect their use of the site, the testing did reveal instances where these older adults' fine motor skills and vision made it more difficult to use the technology. To better accommodate such age-related changes, it is necessary to design senior-friendly Web sites [10,13] that can eliminate or at least minimize the amount of scrolling and the use of pop-up/drop-down menus, and also enlarge small items like radio buttons.…”

“…(The latter two were developed primarily for persons with disabilities but they can be useful with web design for older adults as well. For a comparison of these three sets of guidelines, see [10]). Yet, to our best knowledge, no specific guidelines have been developed for guiding the design of electronic map interfaces for older adults, a gap this study begins to address.…”