Accessibility for Seniors on the Web
One of the reasons accessibility in web design is so important is because a large percentage of seniors are surfing the web. The baby boomers are approaching or are in their sixties and about 75% of them are surfing the web to get information about health issues in particular and they are also shopping big time. How nice is it for them to shop at Christmas for their grandchildren without having to go out and brave the elements? I think it’s absolutely fantastic that the internet has made seniors’ lives so much easier. And the internet has also enabled them to keep their minds active, which, in my opinion, is an important key to longevity.
So what does that mean to a web designer? Well, a savy designer would design sites to adhere to current web standards and accessibility. Using dark text on light backgrounds, enabling the visitor to adjust the font size on the web page, and clear concise information on a page with easy navigation is what a senior should expect to find when visiting sites and the smart designer should know this.
Unfortunately, that is often not the case. In fact, many corporate web sites virtually ignore the needs of seniors, using deprecated code, unreadable text, and worse, unclear content. How ignorant and just plain dumb is that?
My advice to web designers, whether freelance or corporate, is think about seniors and the baby boomers and what their needs are, and design your sites accordingly. If you take care of them, they’ll take care of your bank account by giving you their business.
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March 27th, 2007 at 10:54 am
Good advice Karen. My site is boomer-oriented and I only post in large text. Also, I try to not get too technical or link to sites that I believe are too technical. I try not to clutter up the sidebars with anything other than links to other boomer websites or my previous posts.
I’m surprised how few web sites take your advice, because boomers spend a lot of money either online shopping and/or making purchasing decisions based on web site information.
March 27th, 2007 at 11:24 am
Hi Brian,
thanks for stopping in
yes…boomers are a huge demographic and anyone that doesn’t acknowledge that fact is far-sighted indeed.
Another mistake is not coding sites with relative font sizes like this:
p { font-size: 0.95em; }: correct wayp {font-size: 12pt; }: incorrectthe correct way enables a user to resize their fonts using the browser “view” function.
At this very moment I’m searching for a plugin for WordPress that will insert a function inline to resize the font to make it easier for users
April 9th, 2007 at 7:05 am
I Karen I sent a plugin for font resizing through your contact form hope it is what you are looking for
April 9th, 2007 at 11:05 am
hi Sloan,
thanks, I got the email and have downloaded the plugin and will try it out later. If this works, it’s exactly what I’ve been looking for.
May 13th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Good advice!