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A gender stereotype that has some basis in research is that men are more reluctant to ask for directions than women. We wanted to investigate whether this stereotype applies to technology-related contexts, affecting older adults’ abilities to learn new technologies. To explore how help seeking and gender might relate for older adults, we conducted a controlled experiment with 36 individuals (18 men and 18 women), and observed how often they asked for help when learning new applications. We also conducted post- experiment interviews with participants. We found that although most participants stereotyped older men as being reluctant to ask for help in the interview, the difference between men and women was minimal in the experiment. Instead, other factors had a greater effect: older participants took longer to complete tasks and participants with lower technology self-efficacy asked significantly more questions.
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Perception and Adoption of Mobile Accessibility Features by Older Adults Experiencing Ability Changes
To investigate how older adults perceive ability changes (e.g., sensory, physical, cognitive) and how attitudes toward those changes affect perception and adoption of built-in mobile accessibility features (such as those found on Apple iOS and Google Android smartphones and tablets), we conducted an interview study with 14 older adults and six of their family members. Accessibility features were difficult for participants to find and configure, which were issues compounded by a reluctance to use trial-and-error. At 4-6 weeks after the interview, however, some participants had adopted new accessibility features that we had showed them, suggesting a willingness to adopt once features are made visible. The older adults who did already use accessibility features had experienced a disability earlier in life, suggesting that those experiencing progressive ability changes later in life might not be as aware of accessibility features, or might not have the know-how to adapt technologies to their changing needs. Our findings provide support for creating technologies that can detect older adults’ abilities and recommend or enact interface changes to match.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1818594
- PAR ID:
- 10134436
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ASSETS '19: The 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 267 to 278
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3308561.3353780
