Designing accessible experiences for older users: user requirement analysis for a railway ticketing portal

Abstract

This article presents the results of a survey that shows that older users differ in their attitude and experience towards the Internet not only according to their age or to their previous knowledge with Internet services, but also according to what they are expecting from this media. The aim of this study was to collect information about barriers on usage and perception of an online ticketing service for a nationwide public railway company, in order to enhance the notion of "accessibility" toward a broader understanding including non-technical accessibility factors as semantic accessibility and/or procedural accessibility. The results of the survey with 1,208 participants and additionally focus groups, interviews and qualitative analysis of user feedback indicate that in order to improve and optimize the usage of the online system for older adults, it is necessary to develop a system which is not only universally accessible, but also satisfies the specific expectations of senior users. This article concentrates on designing accessible user experiences and presents several recommendations to the area and for WCAG 2.0 according to the results.