Designing web sites for the older users

It is nice to see an age related web design article that starts by talking some common sense.

The discussion on web design for older site visitors often drifts towards accessibility and gets mixed up with looking at disabilities rather abilities, but this should not always be a given.

Not every person over 65 years has eyesight so poor that they have to increase text size or change the contrast of text colours. Not every person over the retirement age has problems with motor control or significant short term memory loss. The diversity of the 65+ user group is enormous.

A website might be easy to use for someone over 75 years old simply because they're experienced web surfers or familiar with the site. In contrast you might find someone younger, but with less Internet experience, struggling to use the same site.

It is not a bad list of things to do and not to do. My only gripe is that it doesn’t cover any of the issues of using Web 2.0 technology, especially AJAX. Dick Stroud