Yes, it’s soon to be silver surfer week which is all about championing digital equality and inclusion for older people. They are even offering some free computing books. The whole ‘iTea and Biscuits’ thing is their idea as an alternative name for the Silver Surfer week, and I have to say I like it.
For [...]

Or rather, why should you offer text to speech software on your site?
Generally, the reason is given ‘to make the site more accessible to people with disabilities’. This is usually the model that companies who produce TTS software use to try and persuade people to use their product.
Some forms of text to speech software are [...]

…also known as Better Connected Critique Volume XXVI in a series of … um … I don’t think Roman numerals go that high.
Webcredible have been reviewing the ‘leading’ UK local council websites for usability — or at least those 20 sites which have been identified as the leading top 20 websites by the 2008 Better [...]

After attending the PSF Event ‘The Future of Local Authority Websites and How They Are Measured’ I had some degree of confidence that SOCITM were listening to what the audience had to say, and that the Better Connected report in subsequent years would improve.
This was in now small measure due to Richard Steel’s attitude, [...]

This is the final part of a three part series looking at the COI document Delivering Inclusive Websites which was published on 5th June 2008.
This section will look at design, my conclusions, and the issue of enforcement.

This is the second part of a three part series looking at the COI document Delivering Inclusive Websites which was published on 5th June 2008.
This section will look at planning, procurement and testing accessibility.

The Public Sector Web Management Group provided some input into the COI’s consultation document ‘Delivering Inclusive Websites’ in November 2007. In December, I had a conversation with Adam Bailin, which was reported on the PSWMG Forum, which seemed to suggest they were at least looking at taking a stance less based on WCAG 1.0 and [...]

…and How They Are Assessed.
I was at the aforementioned event with the long title on Thursday 5th June in Birmingham. Well, technically I was the event chair so hopefully I contributed more than just being at the event, but that’s really up to other people to decide.
Basically, the event (put on by PSF) was an [...]

Guidelines
And then they look at previous guidelines designed for older people. There have been more than half a dozen sets of guidelines published before — the only one of which I’d previously come across being Webcredible’s Usability for older web users, which I would still recommend as a useful starting point.

Scrolling and other mouse [...]

Age Literature: Age-Related Functional Limitations
Getting older can result in:

Vision issues:

Decreasing ability to focus on near tasks
Changes in colour perception and sensitivity: blues/greens become harder to see then reds/yellows and dark blue/black can be indistinguishable
Pupils get smaller so less light gets in (well, I never knew that!) — 80 year old retinas receive only 15% of [...]