Improving access for elderly and severely disabled persons: a hybrid adaptive and generic interface

摘要

The current work promotes Universal Access by developing software that enables very elderly and/or severely disabled people to participate in the Information Society. In addition to providing software suitable for elderly and disabled people in general, adaptive software has been developed which meets the individual requirements of some special needs users. Software was developed which would support users with severe cognitive deficits. The trial task used in this study was chosen to be motivating to both-the elderly and the young users alike. The adaptive aspect of the interface was developed to meet the requirements of the physically disabled as identified at an earlier stage of the empirical investigation. Analysis of the results produced a classification of the relevant deficits of these users and of the resultant interface requirements for people with either specific physical disabilities or groups of disabilities. Software was developed that would provide the necessary adaptivity based on this classification.