Older Adults
Aging rarely produces one disability. It produces slightly reduced vision, hearing, dexterity, and processing speed simultaneously — which compounds.
Most older users do not consider themselves disabled, and will blame themselves when your site fails.
Each individual impairment is mild. Text is slightly too small, contrast is slightly too low, the target is slightly too small for a hand that is slightly less steady, the timeout is slightly too short, and the error message is slightly too vague. Any one is manageable. All five on the same form produces failure — and this group overwhelmingly interprets that failure as their own fault rather than the site's, so they do not complain. They call your support line, or they stop using the service.
Scale: The World Health Organization projects that one in six people worldwide will be aged 60 or over by 2030, with age-related vision, hearing, and dexterity changes rising in step. (Source: WHO. Survey-based disability figures undercount — treat this as a floor.)
What they're using
- Larger system font sizes and browser zoom
- Hearing aids
- Occasionally a screen magnifier, rarely a screen reader
- Usually no assistive technology and no awareness that accommodations exist
5 barriers we find most often, and the criteria behind them.
Small text and small targets together
Reduced acuity and reduced dexterity compound: a 12-pixel link in a dense menu is both hard to read and hard to hit.
Success criteria: 1.4.4 Resize Text AA · 2.5.8 Target Size (Minimum) AA
Low contrast in ordinary lighting
Contrast sensitivity declines with age, so a ratio that technically passes on a calibrated monitor may still fail in a bright room.
Success criteria: 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum) AA · 1.4.11 Non-text Contrast AA
Short timeouts
Banking, benefits, and healthcare portals frequently time out faster than an older user can locate a document and type a number.
Success criteria: 2.2.1 Timing Adjustable A
Unfamiliar interface conventions
Hamburger menus, icon-only navigation, gesture-driven interfaces, and hidden controls assume conventions that are learned rather than obvious.
Success criteria: 3.2.3 Consistent Navigation AA · 3.2.4 Consistent Identification AA · 2.5.1 Pointer Gestures A
Uncaptioned video and poor audio
Age-related hearing loss is extremely common, and captions are the accommodation most likely to be used without being requested.
Success criteria: 1.2.2 Captions (Prerecorded) A · 1.2.4 Captions (Live) AA
The changes that actually remove the barrier.
Raise your floors
Larger base type, generous targets, and contrast with headroom rather than contrast that just barely passes.
Extend or remove timeouts
And warn before they expire, with a way to continue that does not lose entered data.
Label your icons
Text beside icons removes a guessing game for everyone.
Caption everything
This group uses captions heavily and asks for them rarely.
Three tests you can run before you call anyone.
- Watch a real older user complete your primary task. It is the fastest accessibility education available.
- Check your support call log for the tasks people call about instead of completing online.
- Measure your smallest interactive target and your smallest text size.
If any of those go badly, you have your answer and you did not need a vendor to get it. What a vendor is for is the part after: knowing which of the 55 criteria that maps to, how deep it goes, and what it costs to fix properly rather than patch.
Run the Free CheckerWhere this shows up in practice
Other people the standard was written for.
Situational and Temporary Barriers
A broken arm, bright sunlight, a noisy train, a bad connection, a borrowed laptop. The accommodation is identical to the permanent one.
Read the profilePeople Who Use Screen Readers
A screen reader reads your markup, not your design. Everything meaningful you expressed visually has to also exist in code.
Read the profileAll 55 Success Criteria
Every Level A and AA criterion in plain language, with the failure we see most often for each.
Reference