Considerations in Designing Human-Computer Interfaces for Elderly People

As computing devices continue to become more heavily integrated into our lives, proper design of human-computer interfaces becomes a more important topic of discussion. Efficient and useful human-computer interfaces need to take into account the abilities of the humans who will be using such interfaces, and adapt to difficulties that different users may face – such as the difficulties that elderly users must deal with. Interfaces that allow for user-specific customization, while taking into account the multiple difficulties that older users might face, can assist the elderly in properly using these newer computing devices, and in doing so possibly achieving a better quality of life through the advanced technological support that these devices offer. In this paper, we explore common problems the elderly face when using computing devices and solutions developed for these problems. Difficulties ultimately fall into several categories: cognition, auditory, haptic, visual, and motor-based troubles. We also present an idea for a new adaptive operating system with advanced customizations that would simplify computing for older users

Challenges in Developing Applications for Aging Populations

Elderly individuals can greatly benefit from the use of computer applications, which can assist in monitoring health conditions, staying in contact with friends and family, and even learning new things. However, developing accessible applications for an elderly user can be a daunting task for developers. Since the advent of the personal computer, the benefits and challenges of developing applications for older adults have been a hot topic of discussion. In this chapter, the authors discuss the various challenges developers who wish to create applications for the elderly computer user face, including age-related impairments, generational differences in computer use, and the hardware constraints mobile devices pose for application developers. Although these challenges are concerning, each can be overcome after being properly identified

Re-Presenting Text in a Website for Visually Impaired Users using Braille Line

As new web technologies emerging and being adopted in the design of a website, web accessibility has become a major issue especially for people with disabilities .Limitation of assistive technology to render webpage has also been contributing factor for poor web accessibility by the visually impaired users. This issue has caused visually impaired users loss semantic information of webpage besides creating frustration situation of web browsing. In this paper, factors that cause web browsing frustration to the visually impaired users and types of tactile effects that can be implemented in the Braille Line device to render the semantic information of webpage are explored. The main objectives of this project is to build a website reader and program a Braille Line 20 cell device for web browsing focusing on presenting non visual text elements such as font attributes and text hierarchy that can be critical to meaning of the text. Tactile technology have been chosen to be adopted in the Braille Line as the touch is the most active sense of visually-impaired people to acquire knowledge .From the prototype to be build, a sample group of visually impaired users will be taken to test and evaluate the website and the device in terms of technology as well as its effectiveness. The results and recommendations were shared by the end of the project as a key milestone for future renditions of the project

Re-Presenting Text in a Website for Visually Impaired Users using Braille Line

As new web technologies emerging and being adopted in the design of a website, web accessibility has become a major issue especially for people with disabilities .Limitation of assistive technology to render webpage has also been contributing factor for poor web accessibility by the visually impaired users. This issue has caused visually impaired users loss semantic information of webpage besides creating frustration situation of web browsing. In this paper, factors that cause web browsing frustration to the visually impaired users and types of tactile effects that can be implemented in the Braille Line device to render the semantic information of webpage are explored. The main objectives of this project is to build a website reader and program a Braille Line 20 cell device for web browsing focusing on presenting non visual text elements such as font attributes and text hierarchy that can be critical to meaning of the text. Tactile technology have been chosen to be adopted in the Braille Line as the touch is the most active sense of visually-impaired people to acquire knowledge .From the prototype to be build, a sample group of visually impaired users will be taken to test and evaluate the website and the device in terms of technology as well as its effectiveness. The results and recommendations were shared by the end of the project as a key milestone for future renditions of the project

Designing an Educational and Intelligent Human-Computer Interface for Older Adults

As computing devices continue to become more heavily integrated into our lives, proper design of human-computer interfaces becomes a more important topic of discussion. Efficient and useful human-computer interfaces need to take into account the abilities of the humans who will be using such interfaces, and adapt to difficulties that different users may face – such as the particular difficulties older users must face. However, various issues in the design of human-computer interfaces for older users yet exist: a wide variance of ability is displayed by older adults, which can be difficult to design for. Motions and notions found intuitive by younger users can be anything but for the older user. Properly-designed devices must also assist without injuring the pride and independence of the users – thus, it’s understood that devices designed “for the elderly” may encounter a poor reception when introduced to the ageing community. Affective computing gives current researchers in HCI a useful opportunity to develop applications with interfaces that detect mood and attention via nonverbal cues and take appropriate actions accordingly. Current work in affective computing applications with older adult users points to possibilities reducing feelings of loneliness in the older adult population via these affective applications. However, we believe that everyday applications – such as chat programs or operating systems – can also take advantage of affective computing principles to make themselves more accessible for older adults, via communication enhancement. In this thesis, we document a variety of work in the field of developing human-computer interfaces for the older adult user, and the various requirements each of these studies confirm regarding human-computer interaction design for the elderly. We then explain how integration of affective computing can positively affect these designs, and outline a design approach for proper human-computer interfaces for the elderly which take into account affective computing principles. We then develop a case study around a chat application – ChitChat – which takes these principles and guidelines into account from the beginning, and give several examples of real-world applications also built with these guidelines. Finally, we conclude by summarizing the broader impacts of this work