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A study of web usability for older adults seeking online health resources

Published: 01 December 2004 Publication History

Abstract

The Web offers older adult users immediate access to health resources that might not otherwise be available. Older adult users, however, may encounter Web barriers associated with normal aging and lower education. The National Institute on Aging Web guidelines were used to assess the usability of 125 Web sites offering health resources. Performance, translation, and reading complexity were also assessed. Results showed that many of the sampled sites were not senior-friendly. Only 12% of the sites offered a Spanish version, many containing nontranslated text. Approximately a third of sampled sites required a college education to comprehend extracted health information.

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction
ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction  Volume 11, Issue 4
December 2004
143 pages
ISSN:1073-0516
EISSN:1557-7325
DOI:10.1145/1035575
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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 December 2004
Published in TOCHI Volume 11, Issue 4

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Author Tags

  1. Aging
  2. Web design
  3. Web download time
  4. Web usability
  5. content accessibility
  6. health literacy
  7. older adults
  8. user interfaces

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