Media Communications & Cultural Studies Association
Abstract
As the demographic transition occurs in a global scale, dealing with the consequences
of population ageing has emerged as a critical task to modern societies. This has led
government entities to pay more and more attention to seniors’ concerns, limitations and
needs. A deep understand of old citizens, especially those unfamiliar with Internet and
smartphone technologies, is also a challenge in order to enable them to fully benefit of
the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). In the light of this issue, personalization
and user-centred approaches involving older adults in all development
stages may be the key for higher levels of user engagement with such ICT solutions as
the interactive television (iTV) platform reported in this paper (+TV4E). The +TV4E is
an on-going research project conducted at University of Aveiro, Portugal, based on a
social inclusion approach, aiming to take benefit from the television viewing dynamics
of senior viewers, by interweaving short and personalized adverts related to public and
social services alongside regular broadcast contents. The platform is being designed
with a user-centred approach featuring the integration of assistive technologies and multiple
multimedia communication channels. In this paper, a system architecture to deliver
the informative contents is stated and a discussion of the potential social impacts of providing such platform is presented
