Tailor-made Accessible Computers: An Interactive Toolkit for Iterative Co-Design

Abstract

An increasing number of people with little experience in technology desire to use the Internet and web related services like social networking or online information research. However, the way most computers are designed today does not allow many older people to participate in this key technology due to their lack in computer-literacy compared with younger generations. Age-related impairments and disabilities can further complicate or deny the use of conventional computers. To remove existing barriers, we created a series of tailor-made computers, which met specific needs like improved accessibility or particular aesthetics. To accomplish this, we used a co-design toolkit that we created (a) to provide senior users with early tangible experiences of their future systems and (b) to iteratively convert it into the final implementation. In this paper, we demonstrate both the toolkit and the resulting designs of accessible Internet computers.