Increasing Web Accessibility Through a Personalized Web Browser for Older Adults

Abstract

© 2020, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature. A web browser is a crucial tool for older adults to access the Internet. An essential reason for web browser redesign is to increase the accessibility for older people that considered a particular user group. The paper presents an approach to redesign a web browser for older adults. The approach involves: (1) identification of standard and recommendations for web browser design for older persons; (2) redesign and develop a prototype web browser; and (3) usability evaluation of the prototype with 20 older adults. The results show that the prototype is senior-friendly, the older adults were able to use web personalizing features to meet their preferences effectively, and the prototype was more preferred than the existing browsers. This paper makes two contributions in the area: first, it provides an approach to design senior-friendly applications; second, it presents the use of the approach that can be repeated and extended in other cases.