A Study of Web Accessibility Barriers for Older Adults, and Heuristics Evaluation of Email Websites Based on Web Accessibility Heuristics for Older Adults by AARP

As people live longer and adults are increasingly using the web, it has become an increasingly important social factor to make website accessible for the older adults as many of their works are done through internet including to be in touch with their children, grand children, friends and colleagues, for online shopping of groceries and other important items, for acquiring knowledge of their health issues and so on.United Nations has estimated that 20 % of the overall world population will be above 60 years of age by 2050[1]. The report, An Ageing World: 2008 anticipates that within the upcoming 30 years older adults population is projected to become double 506 million in 2008 to 1.3 billion, which will be the increment from 7 % to 14% of the aged population. [12]This rapidly increasing population of older adults over the web is not taken into consideration by web developers while designing websites that is they don’t make accessible websites for older adults. There are significant web accessibility barriers for people with disabilities including older adults who face many accessibility problems while accessing websites including vision impairments, hearing impairments, psychological hindrances, motor impairments, mental model inaccuracy, decline in learn-ability and memorability. Due to these barriers older adults find significant problems in accessing the web. For example the use of mouse, double clicking, using scrollbars and absence of a proper website navigation for older adults, the use of font family and sizes which are not legible for older adults having vision impairments or weak eye sight, for blind older adults the top to bottom logical order of tables or improper use of heading tags may create accessibility barriers.This paper discusses these accessibility barriers faced by older adults in accessing websites. Furthermore it presents an expert analysis of Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo mail accessibility problems based on WAI AGE guidelines (Web Accessibility Guidelines for older adults by W3C) and heuristics evaluation based on AARP heuristics