Univ Access Inf Soc (2005) 4: 12 DOI 10.

1007/s10209-005-0112-7

E D I T ORI AL

Panayiotis Zaphiris Sri Kurniawan R. Darin Ellis

Web and aging: challenges and opportunities

Published online: 15 July 2005 Springer-Verlag 2005

In recent years, a signicant increase of the older population has led to various studies investigating the eect of age in utilizing the Web as an information resource. Research shows that older adults are beginning to incorporate Web use in their daily activities, mainly because the Web presents an opportunity for them to maintain a high quality of life. As a consequence, a variety of new opportunities and challenges for facilitating Universal Access arise in the context of Web uses by older adults. This special issue brings together work by researchers, academics and practitioners from various disciplines who are interested in the inter relationships among web access, web usability and ageing. This special issue is the outcome of an open electronic call that was addressed to the HCI research community at large in JanuaryJune 2004. Seven submissions out of 11 were selected on the basis of thorough peer review. The selection of articles presented here addresses major issues in the challenges and opportunities of the use of the Web by older adults, mainly focussing on novel methodologies, theories, products and design guidelines that address these issues, as well as on related case studies. The rst two articles centre around the introduction of computers and the Web to older people in the United Kingdom. The rst one, entitled Strategies for teaching older people to use the World Wide Web, by Anna Dickinson, Roos Eisma, Peter Gregor, Audrey Syme and Scott Milne, describes the strategies that the authors adopted when teaching older people to use the Web in a computer class, by simplifying existing interfaces and
P. Zaphiris (&) Centre for HCI Design, City University, EC1V 0HB London, UK E-mail: zaphiris@soi.city.ac.uk S. Kurniawan School of Informatics, University of Manchester, PO Box 88, Manchester, M60 1QD, UK R. D. Ellis Institute of Gerontology, Wayne State University, 87 E Ferry Street, Detroit, MI 48202, USA

tailoring the instruction to the level of the individuals in the class. The second article, Introducing computers and the Internet to older users: ndings from the Care OnLine project, by Zaheer Osman, David Poulson and Colette Nicolle, describes a project where computers and the Internet were introduced to the homes of older people and vulnerable volunteers. This study demonstrated that older people can become active users of computers and the Internet, with signicant benets. The subsequent article, http://www.nihseniorhealth.gov The process of construction and revision in the development of a model Web Site for use by older adults, by Roger W. Morrell, oers comprehensive researchbased guidelines on how to make web sites accessible for older adults, and shows how such guidelines can be implemented in the construction of a web site for older adults to locate health information. Two articles report studies leading to interesting design implications. The rst, entitled Input devices for Web browsing: age and hand eects, by Tiany Jastrzembski, Neil Charness, Patricia Holley and Jerey Feddon, examines performance on a mixed pointing and data entry task using direct and indirect positioning devices for younger, middle-aged, and older experienced mouse users using preferred and non-preferred hands. The second one, Personalization of Web browsing: adaptations to meet the needs of older adults, by Vicki L. Hanson and Susan Crayne, discusses user controls that make a number of adaptations on the y, targeted to increase the usability of Web pages for a diverse population of users. One article, Senior users of the Internet: lessons from the cybernun Study, by Deborah J. Smith, looks at a unique group of older Web users: religious nuns. This study shows that computer use does not signicantly increase life satisfaction of this group. However, the attitudes toward computer use improve with time, replicating results from other studies on computer use by older people. Finally, the paper titled User study on older adults use of Web and search engines, by Anne Aula, suggests that

seniors must also be provided with enough support to make their rst experiences with the Web encouraging, and must be made to see the possible uses of the computer. According to the results of this study, seniors have dierent motivations for web and computer use, and they are not interested in health related information only. As a consequence, web advertising should target seniors as a group with highly divergent needs and requirements. The Guest Editors of this special issue would like to thank the Editorial Board of the International Journal Universal Access in the Information Society, and in particular Prof. Constantine Stephanidis, for his continuous support and guidance throughout the process of editing this issue. Special thanks also go to all the reviewers, whose valuable and constructive comments contributed to ensuring the high quality of this special issue. Finally, our thanks go to all authors of all submissions for their interest and important contributions in the area of web and ageing.

List of reviewers
Chrisoula Alexandraki, Foundation for Research and TechnologyHellas, Greece Roos Eisma, University of Dundee, UK R. Darin Ellis, Wayne State University, USA Jan Engelen, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium Joy Goodman, University of Glasgow, UK Sri Kurniawan, University of Manchester, UK Murni Mahmud, University of Manchester, UK Michael Pieper, FraunhoferFIT, Germany Dominique Scapin, Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique, France Hiroyuki Umemuro, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan Mary Zajicek, Oxford Brookes University, UK Panayiotis Zaphiris, City University, UK