Enabling health application accessibility through interface modalities for elderly

Abstract

Along with the development of technology, the launching of new devices often leaves the usability problems for the elderly behind. It happens not only for devices but also its application, i.e., entertainment applications, health applications, learning applications, etc. Most of the time, the elderly find it hard to use due to its usability problems or unfamiliar feelings. This research focused on empirically investigating a health application interface so that elderly could use it easily without obstacles and help the treatment independently. Three interface modalities were tested, namely, textual, pictorial, and typing interfaces. The result showed that the option-based interfaces (i.e., textual and pictorial) led to shorter performance time than input-based interface (i.e., typing) among the three interfaces. Also, the pictorial interface has the highest SUS score. All respondents chose the pictorial interface as their first choice, enabling health application accessibility through the appropriate interface modality for the elderly.