My Health: An Online Healthcare Social Network Inclusive for Elderly People

摘要

Online Health Social Networks (OHSN) are becoming increasingly important in the life of patients by offering them opportunities for helping people to expose and share health situations, experiences and allowing them to form relationships for offering or receiving emotional support. In this work, we investigate how OHSNs can be made more inclusive for elderly people. Firstly, we describe "My Health", an OHSN developed by our research group, tailored for patients with cardiovascular problems. We then assess how three well-known OHSNs address accessibility guidelines. The results show that not all developers are implementing the current version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0). Using "My Health" as a study case, we perform a usability evaluation with the system's target users after the implementation such accessibility guidelines. As a result, we conclude that conformance to guidelines does not ensures that the users will not have usage and interaction problems.