- [Stefani] Thanks for joining us today. We're gonna begin in a couple of minutes just giving everyone a chance to get into the webinar. Well, good morning and good afternoon or even evening depending on where you're joining us from. My name Stefani Cuschnir. I'm part of the business development team here at TPGi. I think we'll give it one more minute and then we'll get started. Okay, so we're right at the hour. Thanks everyone for joining us today for the Digital Accessibility for Older Adults with Leilani Mason. I have a couple of housekeeping items that I'm gonna go over and then we'll hand it off to Leilani. This session is being recorded. Everyone will be receiving the recording after the event. We do have captions available, so feel free to use them as needed. We will have time for live Q&A at the end of the presentation. Please try to use the Q&A box as we will answer as many of the questions as we can. Sometimes if they're put in the chat, I miss them, but I am gonna try to keep an eye on the chat as well. Lastly, I'd like to mention if anyone needs any accessibility support, training, or usability testing, I will be sending out an email with a link to schedule a time to speak with one of our experts after the webinar. And with that, I will let Leilani get started and provide an introduction of herself. And here we go.

- Thank you, Stefani. So good morning or good afternoon or good evening. It's morning for me. I'm in California. But today we're going to discuss Digital Accessibility for Older Adults. And I just wanna preface this, that this webinar will be about making content accessible to older adults and kind of just like a general conversation around that. And it's very beginner friendly, but it's not like an instructional course on using technology. But I hope that everyone is able to gain something today from the webinar. So a little about me is I'm a solutions engineer here at TPGi, which means I do scoping and configurations for Digital Accessibility audits. I'm from southern Maryland, kind of the Washington DC area and I currently live in the Sacramento Valley area of California. And I studied information technology and deaf studies at Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland. And I originally gave this presentation back in March at the CSUN Assistive Technology Conference in Anaheim, California. So when we're talking about older adults, like who are we talking about? So typically people ages 65 plus are considered older adults and about one in six people in the United States fall into the older adults category. And the baby boomer generation has contributed to this because many babies were born from 1946 to 1964 and many of them are now falling in that age range. In the US, 24% of people ages 65 to 74 report having a disability and 46% of people ages 75 or older report having a disability. Age related disabilities can be related to mobility, hearing, vision, cognition and/or memory. In addition to people developing disabilities as they age, there are also people who have disabilities from a younger age and they have those disabilities through older adulthood. And having a disability from a younger age versus developing a disability as an older adult can be different experiences for those people even if the disability is the same. So an example of this would be someone who is deaf and then someone else who is late deafened. A person who is deaf or hard of hearing from a younger age may be more likely to learn sign language and they may be involved with the deaf community, but a person who loses their hearing as an older adult, they may continue to communicate using their native spoken language and they may not fully be involved or fully identify with deaf culture. And of course every person is different. So I mean those scenarios could even be flipped depending on the individual. But if you think you know about a disability just because you know one person with a disability, you definitely don't know everyone's experience and it can be very different depending on age and other factors. So something that older adults could experience is ageism, and this is prejudice based on or prejudice against a person based on their age. And it can actually happen to anyone at any age, but it just occurs differently. And ageism is often referred to as the last acceptable form of discrimination because even sometimes when people aren't trying to be, they may still contribute to ageism. And some examples would be like if you're scrolling through social media and maybe you're looking for skincare advice, you may be bombarded with messages saying, you know, get rid of wrinkles, get rid of fine lines, get rid of all the signs of aging. You know, prevent aging, which kind of sends a message of, you know, the worst possible thing that could happen is that you look like you aged a little. And I love skincare, but that messaging of it could put some negative thoughts about aging into your mind or when you're watching movies, TV shows, or even like some commercials, sometimes older adults are made fun of in a way that makes them seem stubborn or confused or helpless. And over time when we consume this content over and over and over again, we may form some biases. And even though those were kind of like kinda like silly examples when we're talking about older adults and technology, ageism can lead to the belief that older adults are not using technology because some people have this idea in their mind that older adults are are clueless with using computers or smartphones. And this could lead to the belief that older adults do not need to be considered when designing technology. And additionally, due to intersectionality, older adults with disabilities may experience a combination of ageism and ableism. So while speaking about biases that we may have as humans, it's also important to note that computers may have biases. So AI is currently a huge topic. I feel like you can't go anywhere without someone bringing up AI or artificial intelligence. So artificial intelligence combines large amounts of data and algorithms to make decisions. And one form of AI is machine learning. And machine learning allows computers to learn automatically and then make decisions based on discovered patterns. And so word embedding models can be used as a part of machine learning to assist computers in understanding natural human language. And so this supports technologies like Siri or Alexa. And some word embedding models have been documented to have biases against various groups and that includes older adults. So for example, if you're asking a word embedding model to associate words, it may associate the word young with being courageous but associate the word old with being stubborn. And I want to note that this doesn't mean that specific voice assistants or specific AI chat bots or anything are ageist, but the process used to develop them may have had biases along the way. And that's important to keep in mind. Additionally, many times AI can make better predictions about younger adults than about older adults. And this could be for many reasons. But one example that was believed to lead to this is because data about younger adults may be grouped into smaller age groups and smaller age ranges. While data about older adults may be grouped into a wide range such as just over 40, 40 and up. And if these biases affect the experience of older users at all, they may be discouraged from using technology because they'll feel like it wasn't designed with them in mind. And if the amount of older adults using technology drops, then that leads to the belief that they just don't need to be considered in technology, which leads to biases. And then that cycle just continues and continues. But despite this, older adults are using technology and in the US 75% of adults 65 and older are internet users and 61% of adults 65 and older are smartphone owners. So this is why it's so crucial to design with older adults and especially older adults with disabilities in mind. They should be included in user testing so you can make sure that you're considering them before a product is even released. And it's also important to continue doing ongoing testing of your technology. And the good news is that many existing will WCAG 2.2 standards overlap with the needs of older adults. So if you're already doing a combination of manual accessibility audits and maybe some automated scans as well, you may already be supporting the needs of older adults. We can do that through our ARC platform. I have the picture of the ARC platform here from TPGi and throughout the remainder of this presentation I will highlight a few examples of how WCAG standards overlap with and can support the needs of people with age related disabilities specifically. But I want to note that it's important to focus on all of the WCAG 2.2 success criteria because I don't mention all of them, I just pick out a few. But it's important to focus on all of them to ensure that you're supporting all users. So criterion 1.4.4, resize text that requires that text can be resized without assistive technology up to 200% without losing content. So this is important for older adults that may just be using a smaller device like a mobile phone or a tablet. And then this is also important for older adults with low vision because the vision decline that's reported with aging can specifically lead to difficulty focusing on near tasks like tasks just on a computer screen. Criterion 1.4.3 contrast that requires that text and images have a contrast ratio of at least four to five to one. And this can impact older adults specifically with low vision because the vision decline that occurs with aging has also been noted as causing a decrease in contrast sensitivity. So it may be more difficult to determine a background from a foreground if the contrast is not appropriate. And so if you're creating content online, contrast can be something that's pretty simple to test, like you don't have to be an accessibility expert to test color contrast for sure. TPGi, on our site we have a free color contrast analyzer. I have an animation playing of this and it is showing an example of color contrast that would fail. So I have a light blue background and then a yellow foreground color for the text and that fails the color contrast analyzer. And then I have that same light blue background and then black text on top and that passes the color contrast analyzer. And so this tool has a color picker that you can use to select the colors of something on the screen and test the foreground against the background and it will tell you if it passes or fails based on the various standards. And then additionally you can enter in the hexadecimal color code and test it that way. So criteria 1.2.2 and 1.2.4, they require captions for prerecorded and live multimedia content. And this impacts people who are deaf or hard of hearing. And it can also impact people with auditory processing disorder, specifically age related hearing loss can make it difficult to hear higher pitch sounds and it can also make it difficult to separate and understand sounds if there is background music or noise in the multimedia content. So if there's someone talking and then they are playing like a nice instrumental background. Even if an older adult has remaining hearing or they use assistive technology like hearing aids or cochlear implants, captions still may assist them in just overall understanding so they can have the best understanding of the content. And of course for captions to be most effective, they need to be formatted properly. So captions need to be accurate. So whatever is being spoken should be written that way and it should be written exactly that way. So sometimes if an inappropriate word was said aloud in the video, when people are writing out the captions, they will censor that word. But if a word can be heard, whether it's profanity or inappropriate or not, it should be written that way in order to provide equal access. Additionally, automatically generated captions, they can be good. And as technology continues to improve and improve, they're only getting better. Although captions always need to be verified by a human and they need to be corrected if there are any errors. So you shouldn't just flip on the automated captions and say I'm good and not check them for accuracy because they may not be accessible. And then criteria 2.5.5 and 2.5.8, those address target size, these are newer with WCAG 2.2, although I feel like when I initially presented this, but WCAG 2.2 is like even newer, now it kind of feels weird saying it's new because it's WCAG 2.2 has been out for a while. But pointer targets, they must have a minimum size of 24 by 24 pixels for WCAG AA or 44 by 44 pixels for WCAG AAA. And then also targets cannot intersect. So an example of a target is a button that a user must press to do an action. And this is really important for age-related mobility disabilities because something like arthritis that can cause stiffness in the hands and then something like Parkinson's disease can cause tremors. And both of these can make it difficult to select a small button on a site if it's not the appropriate target size. Criterion 3.3.8 addresses accessible authentication. This is also newer with WCAG 2.2. This criterion says to not require cognitive tests and to not require users to solve, recall, or transcribe something to log in. And so this can impact people with cognitive disabilities. Age related cognitive disabilities like dementia and Alzheimer's disease, these can cause symptoms like memory loss and confusion. And so one way to support this criterion is to allow users to copy and paste into authentication fields. And this also allows them to use password managers and allows them to copy and paste to factor authentication codes instead of having to manually type that information in character by character. Additionally, some sites use CAPTCHAs in order to prevent bots and sometimes those CAPTCHAs contain cognitive tests. Some are more complex than others. Some could be like asking a math question or sometimes they'll have you drag something to complete some type of puzzle. And this can cause difficulties for users with cognitive disabilities and it may not be accessible to them. So if you must require some sort of cognitive test to log in and if you have to use that, make sure that there is an accessible alternative. And so the last WCAG criteria that I want to talk about are 2.2.1, timing adjustment, and 2.2.2, pause, stop, hide. So for 2.2.1, users must be able to turn off, adjust, or extend content with a time limit. And for 2.2.2, users must be able to pause, stop or hide auto updating, moving, blinking, or scrolling information. And that information starts automatically, lasts for more than five seconds, and is presented in parallel with other content. So usability studies that have included older adults, which is really important have shown that older adults are more likely to read all of the page. And while younger users may not do that, as someone who would be classified as a younger user myself, I know I'm guilty of sometimes just skimming webpages very quickly. I definitely don't always read all of the information on a page. And so if content on a page expires before a user could finish reading it, or if the content is like moving or scrolling before a user can finish reading the section that they're on, this may cause a negative experience for older adult internet users and it may discourage them in the future. So some key takeaways that I hope we all take away today from this webinar is that one that we unlearn ageism. So whenever you have a negative thought about aging, whether it's about others, whether it's about yourself, try to replace it with a more positive or even just a more neutral thought about aging. Something I like to think about and something I thought about a lot while creating this presentation where my grandparents and other older adults that I've learned so much from in my life and gain so much knowledge from. And then also do not assume that older adults can't or don't use technology because they are, and the statistics show that they are. And then also consider older adults and users of all ages when designing and is super important to consider them in user testing. So we have that feedback and data from all ages of users. And then additionally, when you're testing for digital accessibility, as I mentioned before, ensure you're testing comprehensively to at least WCAG 2.2 AA standards. And that's at least, I mean it's always great to go beyond and to support everyone. So thank you so much. We have plenty of time for questions and then I also in the slides, I have all the resources that I used to create this presentation. Yeah, I believe now we have time for questions.

- [Stefani] There are a couple of questions in the Q&A Leilani, and then there are a couple in the chat. I can do the chat.

- Okay.

- [Stefani] Read them to you if you want. The first person in the chat says, why are older adults likely to read all text on a page?

- So I attached the specific like study that was researching this and I'm not a hundred percent sure why if it's like a generational or a cultural thing, but those were the results that were found. So yeah, so if you wanted me to read in more detail, I do have that attached to the slides.

- [Stefani] Is it on the resource page? Maybe leave the resource thing.

- Yes. Yeah, it's the last slide after this one, the resources page.

- [Stefani] If you wanna go over the ones in the Q&A. Do you see them or do you want me to read them to you? It's a little Q&A box.

- I'm curious. Okay. I'm curious about examples of barriers for tech use by older adults that aren't covered or covered specifically in WCAG. Do you have any that you could share? Are older adults accessibility needs ever missed in designing for accessibility more generally? So many overlap and that's what's found by a lot of like research and a lot of digital accessibility resources. But I believe specific examples that may come up in things like user testing. So like what was mentioned about older adults being more likely to read everything on a page that overlaps with some of the WCAG standards. But that's also something that's not necessarily a disability, but it was found to be something that happens or that older adults may do. So I believe if you're looking for anything that would go like beyond WCAG, it would be something that's probably found in like user testing research. Are there best practices for including text on videos separate from captions to highlight key statistics or quotes or summaries being discussed orally for example? Is it confusing if these don't match captions exactly? For example, if they are a summary. I hope I like fully understood your question and that I'm not answering it incorrectly, but when I say that captions should match exactly what's being spoken or the words that are being outputted in a video, those should be the text that is displayed as the captions. And so I always use the example of sometimes you'll see profanity that's said aloud, but you'll see it in the caption as like a blank space or you'll see it as like number signs or something, which isn't equal access. So that's why I say it should be exactly what's said. And then also all of the other words should match and be accurate to what's being said. In terms of having like a summary or something at the end, I believe that would just be captioned the same. Or if you're saying like, oh should there be like a summary or a transcript provided that's always like recommended as well or at least a transcript is always recommended. I could see summaries as being something that's helpful as well for videos. But I don't know if there's a specific standard or at least not one that I like research for this about like having to include a text summary.

- [Stefani] Are there any-

- [Leilani] So what-

- [Stefani] Oh sorry, go ahead. Go ahead.

- Okay, what is an alternative for CAPTCHA? So there are CAPTCHAs that don't require user intervention, which aren't perfect, but they're called like invisible CAPTCHA. And then if there are other ways like two factor authentication that allow for that copy and paste or other ways that you can authenticate users without requiring them to complete a cognitive task, that's also better than making someone do like a complex puzzle or a math question. Recommended fonts. I know there are recommended fonts depending on someone's needs. I've seen like dyslexic fonts, I've seen there's like another one. So that would be something I would have to follow up with you on because I don't wanna like say, oh I recommend this one and I don't know off the top of my head, I'm sorry.

- [Stefani] We can definitely follow up afterwards. I'll record all the questions that were asked and even if we don't get to all of them, so we'll make sure that goes out.

- Okay, how does this relate to the NIH's study that says people don't read but scan? Is it that older adults scan most of the text? So the specific study that I read that I attached, it did user testing and it talked about, it wasn't the only thing that it talked about older adults like being more likely to read the entire page and younger adults were more likely to scan a page. That wasn't the only thing that had talked about, but it said that that was one of the results that they found when studying how older adults use the internet and browse the internet. I hope that answered your question. Do you have any tips on how to make my managers understand why including older folks in testing though is important? So I think one is the statistics that older adults are using technology and I mean I guess your specific industry, your demographics may be different on whatever like age ranges are accessing your site or your app. But the statistics show that people are using that older adults are using technology and that it's not necessarily the stereotype anymore that people have that like, oh, like people who are older never use the computer, never access the internet. And then also as mentioned toward like the second half of the presentation, that many of the needs of older adults overlap with the WCAG standards, which are super important for digital accessibility. And if you're not testing for digital accessibility, you could be putting yourself at risk. So I think considering older adults and people with disabilities and all different types of users from the beginning allows you to make the most accessible product from the beginning. Considering all of that from the beginning, instead of trying to go back and fix something that's already created, you would've already considered everyone from the beginning. So yeah, hopefully you can make a good case to your managers. How do you find older adults willing to perform user testing? Yeah, I'm not a UX specialist so that would be a great question for them. I'm not a hundred percent sure how you source people. I see you're anonymous so I don't know if we can follow up, but yeah. I would say however people are typically sourced for user testing, whatever demographics they're looking for, you would try to find older adults. But I can't like personally speak to that. Will there be a transcript sent out for the session?

- [Stefani] Oh, we typically out the recorded session as well as the transcript after. We also post everything on our website a couple of days after. So you can always find it there.

- So two factor authentication is causing older adults we support barriers to involvement. Are there any alternatives to this? So with two factors specifically, like I'm not a hundred percent sure what the exact barriers are, but I know when talking about the accessible authentication criteria, a big thing is being able to, so either copy and paste or just be able to like click a link. So if you're sent an email and you can click that link in that and you're verified you're in, that's a lot less, it's a lot less, I dunno if the right word, it's like effort, but it's a lot less to do than either like to having to type out each character in a code that was sent for two factor authentication. So if you're able to just click a link for two factor, that would be a lot, probably a lot better, but I'm not a hundred percent sure like what the exact barriers are. And then also probably just like researching other security methods, seeing what's out there and seeing which one like works for you for the security aspect. And then also like for the accessibility aspect. Someone said thank you. Well thank you for attending. How to check target size without using automated tools? That's a great question that I will have to follow up on because I know about target size but I don't wanna misspeak on how to test it right now.

- [Stefani] You see the one in a scenario we are unable to.

- In a scenario we're unable to proceed further, like unable to select login button, is there any alternate available for it? How can we proceed? Okay. Unable to proceed further. I'm not a hundred percent sure I fully understand the question. Is there any...

- [Stefani] In a scenario we are unable to proceed further, like unable to select the belonging button, is there any alternative available for how to proceed? If they can't select the, I understand it to say if they can't for example, select the unable to select the login button, is there another way for them to be able to proceed? I don't, I don't know.

- Oh, like if, I guess like if a button is not accessible, like if it's not labeled properly or if like you can't tap to it or like that would be something that the developer should fix if a button specifically is not accessible to log in. Yeah, I would refer to the design standards for buttons that WCAG provides about making sure it's labeled as proper contrast is able to be tapped to. If that's what you're asking with this question. If like a button specifically like a login button is not accessible. I find with my mom, she has two factor difficult on her devices as she has to know to use the device to change the email to find the code then find the app requiring it. Yeah, two factor, like it's good from a security perspective in many ways because it's two factors, you have to do like two separate things. But from an accessibility perspective, it can be kind of difficult sometimes. So yeah, I'm not sure like what the question is, but I kind of mentioned it earlier about how being able to like click something, even though like you still have to go to your email or go to somewhere, but being able to click something or even being able to like paste something from a password manager versus having to type everything out is still like less effort than some methods where they don't allow you to copy and paste or they don't allow you to just click a link to authenticate. Oh, for the question about measuring target size, I'm not sure if they're calling out that there aren't automated tools, but if that's the case there is a bookmarklet slash favlet. I don't know if I said the right favlet. I'll try to send a link in a sec. Well, thank you Michelle. I was thinking about the bookmarklet but I wasn't sure if they were asking about something separate from that, but thank you so much.

- [Stefani] There's also somebody, Neil Sorenson, put a link in the chat about target size as well.

- Thank you.

- [Stefani] We do have some questions from the chat.

- Okay.

- [Stefani] With the Q&A. I think there's one more.

- Oh yeah, it's just more of a statement. Okay, so someone was clarifying. Thank you.

- [Stefani] Let me look at the chat. Let's see. How to check target size. We talked about. How are older adults likely to read all text on a page?

- All text? Oh, let me look at the chat, sorry.

- [Stefani] There's a lot in the chat. I can try to synthesize.

- Yeah. Well thank you for always recommending color contrast analyzer. I always recommend it too. Why? Oh yeah, that was mentioned why are older adults likely to read all text on the page?

- [Stefani] I also see, I'm curious about examples of barriers for tech use by older adults that aren't covered or covered explicitly in WCAG. Do you have any you can share? Are older adults accessibility needs ever missed in designing for accessibility more generally?

- Yeah, I kind of, I think I answered that question.

- [Stefani] Okay. Somebody asks, could you please give examples for the 3.3.8 alternative of the human verification? I don't know what that means.

- Oh, I kind of talked about that as well with accessible authentication. From some of my previous research, I have heard older adults expressing concerns on using chatbots. Can you recall any relevant study? I didn't like explicitly cover this in this presentation, but throughout some of the research, I did find that because historically older adults were targeted with a lot of like telemarketer scams or other like internet scams, some older adults have been found to have like some skepticism. So I'm not a hundred percent sure if that's related to like concerns on using chatbots. But that could be related to older adults. Like they sometimes have their guard up because they're trying to avoid like being scammed.

- [Stefani] Somebody put in the chat also the bookmarklet that it's from Adrian Roselli.

- Thank you. How can we better design for older adults knowing they are more likely to read everything on a page. So for example, our hideaway slash flyaway menu is helpful for them to prevent reading info that they might not need. Yeah, I don't wanna say a hundred percent, oh do this, like format your menus a certain way because I am not an expert in that. I know like for the example I gave about like making sure that content doesn't move away or doesn't scroll or disappear before someone could finish reading it. So like that would be something that's helpful. And then in the resources here in that specific study, it may mention like other things you could do to design for older adults, but that is a great question. Okay. Oh, and then someone also brought up the fear of being tricked slash scammed is also why people read everything. People have mentioned that the National Federation for the Blind may be a source to find older adults for testing and thank you for bringing that up. For multifactor authentication, we offer multiple types, so it's user choice. So they have audio tokens, hardware tokens, app password, or app push to authenticate. Thank you for providing that guidance. That's very helpful. I know a lot of people are asking about alternatives. Someone mentioned that Norton Jenny, I think I said that right is a free app which helps identify scams on their devices. Thank you. I see the bookmarklet. And someone asked many code can not be copy and pasted, so how could it, or how's it going to fall under guidelines of WCAG accessible authentication? So under that new criteria on you should be able to copy and paste into password fields, which has been, I believe some people don't allow copy and pasting into password fields like historically because of security reasons. But that's something that should be allowed under that criterion. So that way password managers are super helpful. Honestly, like we talked about today, people who may have like a memory disability, but even for people day to day who just forget things or have a lot of different passwords, that's really helpful for them as well. So, or honestly like many groups of people who may need to copy and paste into the fields for various reasons.

- [Stefani] I see in the chat, someone mentioned also plain language guidelines are helpful to make text more efficient. That seems helpful.

- Yeah, yeah. Thank you. I know there's a lot of talked about, yeah, reminder, you should be using a different password for every site you use. I am guilty of sometimes not doing that, but.

- [Stefani] Me too.

- You definitely should, yeah. And thinking about the plain language guidelines, having a lot of complex words or a lot of complex terms that aren't necessarily necessary, if that's what you're referring to. I've read how, even if it's not necessarily an accessibility issue, but more of like a user experience issue, like using more plain and simple text when being able to, unless yeah, plain language guidelines, yeah. that's always helpful for overall understanding. Yes, offering a password manager and training on how to use is very helpful for our users. Oh, that's great. So I think we've answered everything or?

- [Stefani] Yeah, I think it's fine.

- Except for things I've said I'd follow up on.

- [Stefani] Yeah.

- Yeah. Well thank you all so much and thank you Stefani.

- [Stefani] Yeah, thanks Leilani. This was fantastic. A lot of great engagement and adding to our conversation. We really appreciate that. If anybody is interested in accessibility training, testing tools, kiosk, accessibility, all that TPGi has to offer, you can email us at IDA, I-D-A at TPGi.com. Thanks, have a great day.

- Thank you. Bye.