Towards Multimodal Mobile GIS for the Elderly

Abstract

Information technology can play an important role in helping the elderly to live full, healthy and independent lives. However, elders are often overlooked as a potential user group of many technologies. In particular, we are concerned with the lack of GIS applications which might be useful to the elderly population. The main underlying reasons which make it difficult to design usable applications for elders are threefold. The first concerns a lack of digital literacy within this cohort, the second involves physical and cognitive age-related impairments while the third involves a lack of knowledge on improving usability in interactive geovisualisation and spatial systems. As such, in this chapter we analyse existing literature in the fields of mobile multimodal interfaces with emphasis on GIS and the specific requirements of the elderly in relation to the use of such technologies. We also examine the potential benefits that the elderly could gain through using such technology, as well as the shortcomings that current systems have, with the aim to ensure full potential for this diverse, user group. In particular, we identify specific requirements for the design of multimodal GIS through a usage example of a system we have developed. Such a system produced very good evaluation results in terms of usability and effectiveness when tested by a different user group. However, a number of changes are necessary to ensure usability and acceptability by an elderly cohort. A discussion of these concludes the chapter.