The Old and the Internet
In the US, there is referrence to senior citizens and occasionally Elders. I have no idea what age range these categories are, except they are probably at least 60. In France it’s much clearer, there is a fourth generation, meaning 60–80 and fifth generation: 80 to 100. The 6th generation are becoming more numerous at 100–120. All these generations are increasing in proportion compared to the rest of the population, mainly because of advances in medical science and nutrition.
Nowadays, families are often more scattered than in the past and thus, the Old need to be able to use the internet to chat to their beloved offspring via video chat and such. The problem is that it lies outside their education and general life experience, whilst their various capacities are in decline. It is undoubtedly not helped by the fact that most sites and applications are designed by the comparatively young who have little idea of the problems of old people. Even nurses who have to deal with them spend a few weeks wearing a special suite that handicaps their movements, vision, hearing, and sense of touch, which is a real eye opener for them.
Take, for instance, the vision problem. Generally speaking, Old people need a stronger level of light to be able to see clearly. They need larger font and very good contrast. I, who be old, have difficulty with Medium because of the lack of contrast of medium grey and light grey on white for the standard text with what I would call thin font, and also what appears to be very light green on white besides the avatar. I have no problem with the title, big font, black on white gives good contrast.
As it happens, I’m computer literate. I can incorporate things like Nosquint into Firefox, which makes a big difference. I know the shortcut of Control + mouse wheel movement to change the page size and such. Most old people have had to take a course on computers and how to use the internet. If they can launch Skype/whatever and read and send emails, that’s all they really want to do. They are not usually up to installing add-ons and configuring them and so forth.
Touch screens can be a real pain. Accurate coordination between the eye and the finger to hit a precise spot on the screen is a thing of the past. Don’t I know it, so I have to use a mouse, otherwise, it gets too frustrating to reach out and keep stabbing at the screen in the hope of hitting the hyperlink. At least, tiles do not need accuracy.
Help files generally assume a certain amount of computer knowledge, often more than old people have, so that is then not much real help to them. I can’t keep up with the jargon/acronyms/abbreviations any more. That means I have to spend quite a bit of time looking them up, if I really want to understand what is being explained
Considering that the Old are becoming more numerous on the internet as well as generally and it fills an essential need of keeping in touch with their family and that they also have quite a lot of time to spend using it, then it seems their plight is not being taken into account. As the technology advances as more and more is squeezed onto the page and/or navigation becomes more sophisticated, etc, they are going to be squeezed off the internet and that seems unfair.
It seems something should be done about it and it could be without too much difficulty. Firefox has an add-on, called ‘clearly’, which shows the page with everything removed, but the text. A real boon at times. All it needs is an extra option that changes the font size, contrast, etc to one more suitable for the old ones. Even better would be if the acronyms, etc, were linked to their explanation at the bottom of the page with a return link back. That sort of thing can be handled automatically by programme.
Ideally a ‘clearly’ type system would be incorporated into all browsers as standard, but certainly with-it sites could incorporate it anyway. How about it Medium?
