Towards bridging the accessibility needs of people with disabilities and the ageing community

Abstract

This communication paper introduces the "Web Accessibility Initiative: Ageing Education and Harmonisation" (WAI-AGE) project, a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) project. It is funded by the European Commission under its 6 th Framework Programme (FP6) of the Information Society Technologies (IST), and includes activities to: better understand the needs of the ageing community in the context of existing Web accessibility guidelines; work with the ageing community to obtain more direct input and contribution into the development of solutions and strategies for Web accessibility; revise existing and develop new educational materials to better reflect the accessibility needs of the ageing community on the Web; and to pursue standards coordination and harmonisation to promote the adoption and implementation of a common set of Web accessibility guidelines. This paper delivers some insights on the current progress of the project, and describes some of the expected outcomes. This paper also highlights some of the opportunities for researchers, experts, developers, industry, and users to contribute to the outcomes of the project.

About the relevance of accessibility barriers in the everyday interactions of older people with the web

“…[1,16,26,33,49]). E-mail systems, web portals, systems for web search and navigation, web pages and software personalization and input devices are also geared towards compensating for age-related changes in functional abilities and previous experience with the web.…”

“…It is common to see how older people who started to take courses with little acquaintance with ICT have now a command of them and are the tutors of peers that are starting to take up ICT. 1 Interacting with Computers; International Journal of Human-Computer Studies; Universal Access to the Information Society; ACM Transactions of Human-Computer Interaction; ACM Transactions of Accessible Computing; HCI -first issue -2008; CHI ACM Proceedings, W4ALL, first conference -2008. Keywords: ethnography, fieldwork, older people, older adults, elderly; web accessibility 2 Barcelona has been experiencing a wave of immigration with people fleeing from the north of Africa, the east of Europe and South America.…”

User requirement analysis for a railway ticketing portal with emphasis on semantic accessibility for older users

“…This information is important for users with special needs and must be given for each train, it can for example be created through an icon system where, the user with special needs can use this icon system and choose among trains, which already have accessible options. 3 Calculated with Mann-Whitney U Test, Significance Level Alpha (α) = 0.05, sample size: 927…”

Addressing Challenges in Web Accessibility for the Blind and Visually Impaired

“…In spite of the many existing recommendations, difficult to navigate pages that raise barriers still exist (Abou-Zahra, Brewer, & Arch, 2008;Brajinik, Yesilada, & Harper, 2009;Fuertes et al, 2009;Sayago & Blat, 2009;Hanson, 2009). Assistive technology is used to overcome the barriers and issues in the use of computer-based technology for blind and visually impaired people.…”