4 Easy Steps to Make Your Site More Usable to Older People

There is an excellent free tool available (which I have been using for years now) to check whether colour contrast is sufficient. Its called the Colour Contrast Analyser and is at http://www.paciellogroup.com/resources/contrast-analyser.html

Richard, it is a very good tool, I would highly recommend it, I'm using it myself.

Tom, I'm not that old, but after spending so much time, full time on the computer my eyes are pretty bad. I have to get up close to the computer so these tips help me a lot as well! Thanks

I definitely always keep posts on my site in a nice size font, for all of the reasons you mention.

Tom these are some very good tips for the aging. My mother had very bad hearing and she would have needed the captions on the videos. And the larger font and colors, boy you just got everything covered. Fantastic job.
Debbie

So nice to think about older people, too. After all, we'll all be old and gray one day, and healthy, or so we hope. I often catch myself in the delusion everyone is catching up with me - my kids, nephews and friends - only to wake up to the realization I'm advancing in age at the same rate they do, and in fact, am catching up with my mother! (My father having died, am definitively not catching up with him, or am I :-]) It being easy to make a site accessible to older people, it's really a no-brainer and I shall pay even more attention to it in the future.

One way to help older people on your blog is to write about them and the things that interest them.

Although there are many magazines, I think it helps them to realize we are interested in their feelings and problems.

Many of these are universal to all.

And after all, we are on the way to being an older person too, right?

Push yourself forward in years and wonder what might interest you.

I am not quite "older" yet -- 44. However, I would like to see all of the features you list above incorporated into more blogs -- so many are overly busy and hard to read and enjoy. The larger font point is a really good idea -- I appreciate a larger font already!

Useful information for us to apply where we can, but I would also like to echo Corinne's point about ensuring content also takes on board that older people may be interested in the topic.

I did increase the font size on my site recently and tried to increase the white space. I hope that helps! How would we know?

Andrew

I notice how some sites have small text and even I find it hard to read. I actually commented not long ago on a particular blog to let the blogger know of how difficult it really was, especially the links as the color did not stand out at all.

I have discovered, by accident, since then that as a Firefox user I can hold the 'ctrl' key and use the scroll function of the mouse to adjust the size of the text.

Michelle,
These tips do not only apply to the aging population. Really, for all people without eye-sight, it is only a fact that aging people will more likely benefit from sites which consider the above suggestions.

Wonderful, keep up the great work!

Thank you Debbie, let me just say that there are many more than these four things one could do. But I always say that better one than none, and I thought these four ideas would make a huge difference without having to make an extra big effort for site developers

Very good point. I actually have a post scheduled for later on this week when I will discuss how it helps us in the future what we do today. So, at least now at least two of us are on the same page:-)

Oh, three of us on the same page...
Great tips, and I have to admit that I have neglected this area. Here comes the self explanation: because I thought that discussing the individual disabilities makes sense, but I guess what makes sense is to write from the people's point of view, and not from the definitions' point of view.

There is a way to enlarge fonts in a browser when the page itself is designed to allow it. What really matters is not the large fonts themselves in general, but the ability to use your browser's features to change it. Many sites won't allow this.

Andrew, I guess there isn't a good way to know. Maybe you can measure the amount of time people spend on your site and see if it is longer than before changing the font.

It works in most browsers, as long as the site is coded to allow it, meaning using good coding standards and best practices.

In an age of silver surfing, more and more people are using the web in later life as a way of keeping up with things and getting tasks like shopping done easily. I never considered how to make my site accessible for older users - thanks for the insight!
Jen

too many widgets on a blog force older people to close the window tab...:)
if u are targeting older people for traffic then must make your blog simpler enough so any one can read it without surfing your whole page for a single word...:)

Almost all browsers now allow page zooming so the issue of fixed size fonts is now much less of a problem. For the testing that I and my colleagues do for WCAG2.0 we only fail pages that don't zoom correctly, not that fail to resize text using the built in text-resize (which used to be failed because of Internet Explorers inability to resize these fonts).

It is though still best practice to use reasonable sizes for fonts as the vast majority of web users don't know that page zoom exists.

Contrast and font size are big issues for my 80 year old Father and fast becoming an issue for me.
I don't know how to do many of the things you suggest. When I have increased font size and contrast, "younger" readers complained they didn't like it. Can't please everyone it seems. Do you know of a site that can teach me about how to optimize for the keyboard only?

Richard,
It is certainly true that many people don't know how to resize fonts in their browser. So, I guess it is just a delicate balance of how large you are willing to make your fonts, and what actually makes sense. One way around it is to provide instructions for people to resize fonts.

Bruce,
One solution is to provide controls which allow you to change the font size and contrast. For some site owner what works best is a unique experience, and others prefer to allow the users to change it directly. It is entirely up to you. As long as people can find these controls, you can keep the font smaller if you want to.
Testing for keyboard is essentially unplugging your mouse and see if you can navigate your site and achieve al functionality on your site. As much as I remember, your site doesn't have issues with it.

Yes, keyboard access is important and one area where unexpected problems can occur is what is known as a keyboard trap. This is where a part of the page can be accessed via keyboard but then the focus is stuck within that area. This is one of the WCAG 2.0 checkpoints.

I think captioning videos will become much easier in the coming years with technology automating much of that. It's something I hadn't really considered before but is a good idea as well as useful one.

Tom, I love the heart of your site!

I don't know if these tools exist, but if there are wordpress plugins or any other tools out there that make this process easier, I would love to know about them.

Good color contrast probably comes down mostly to choice of theme... but captioning videos on the other hand... I don't know how to do that without spending a lot of extra time with video editing software.

It is definitely possible to make your site more friendly to people with poor/no vision or poor/no hearing, but the only way I know how to do it now would take quite a bit of work... and I have trouble just finding the time to do a couple of posts on my site every week.

keep smiling,

Benjamin

Joel,
Especially with the automatic Youtube captioning, a whole lot of things are changing. I'm planning to write a more detailed guide about it in the future.

Hi Benjamin,
One approach would be to implement what you learn in future posts, instead of going back to the old ones. I'm not aware of any wordpress tools, but you can certainly make a difference by installing accessible themes. Just by searching for "accessible wordpress themes" you should be able to find some.

Hi Tom,

I always focus on the content and totally forgot about the older people. Thanks for pointing that out.

Thanks Tom!

Actually, I'm in the process of redesigning my whole TyroneShum.com blog to also refresh any of my blog features that will make it more "usable" to people. I'm enjoying how my new blog looks like now but I would more appreciate if you could also check on it for sometime and see how my touches had also applied your concepts.

Have a nice weekend!

What's interesting is that with so many people hovering and squinting into their laptops, people will start needing glasses at younger ages - at least, that's my prediction. We spend so much time with our eyes focused in the same direction. It can't be good for us. We can enlarge our own screen image. It's helpful to me to have you point out the things we can do so we can keep evaluating our blogs to ensure that everyone will find our sites easy to deal with so they will stay to enjoy the results of our hard work and creativity :D

These are excellent suggestions. I already increased font size on all my sites because I have very bad eyesight and have most of my life. With age changes in my eyes, my vision is actually better now, but my glasses still make most people want to fall down or throw up.

I am very interested in closed captioning of videos, but haven't found an easy way to do it. It's not just for the older population or hearing impaired. It is really handy if you forget your headphones or ear buds and can't turn on the volume on your computer because of your surroundings, like being in a library. Some audio isn't clear no matter how well you hear, and captioning would make it easier to follow even when you can't make out the words very well.

I look forward to easier and better tools soon. I also need to update my sites to be less busy and easier on the eyes. I'm probably the one who needs that most on my sites.

Sherri