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SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Saturday November 23 2019, @04:15AM   Printer-friendly
from the You-May-Be-Younger,-But-I-Have-Better-Insurance dept.

(Disclaimer: I wrote the article Creating Online Environments That Work Well For Older Users but suspect that many Soylentils will find it useful.)

A significant part of the Internet-using population is aged 50 or older — including the people who invented it. Web designers need to understand what older users need and why it's not enough to just say, "I can read it, so what's the problem?"

If you're my age you have no doubt run into more than a few web sites that are just plain useless, either because you can't read the text, or because they were designed using assumptions that those of us over forty years of age don't find useful. Whether it's our need for high contrast text, or our preference for actual words and paragraphs over video, the needs of older users often get ignored.

We are the generation that invented and grew up with personal computers. It's absurd to suggest that we are less capable of using technology. In other words, you can't complain about old people not understanding tech, and then also complain that they've taken over Facebook and Twitter. Besides, we also usually have lots more disposable income, so catering to our needs is good for business.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 24 2019, @09:40PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 24 2019, @09:40PM (#924272)

    Just put out a feeler to a friend of mine, apparently there has been a couple bugs sitting open for 10 years about that on the bug tracker. Apparently, their position is that people can use the built-in OS tools to accomplish magnification or hack around it by passing a bunch of command-line options or custom CSS (or switching browsers). So maybe give those a look.