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e-Government online forms: design guidelines for older adults in Europe

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Abstract

This paper reports on the findings of Delivering Inclusive Access to Disabled and Elderly Members of the community (DIADEM), a 3-year project, funded by the European Commission’s Sixth Framework Programme, to assist older adults when accessing, completing, and submitting online forms, by developing web-based assistive technologies that adapt the online form according to users’ needs. A user-centred approach is adopted to gain insights into the challenges faced by 80 older adults in three European countries as they interact with a representative sample of public service-based online forms. A thematic analysis is then carried out on the data, which revealed five over-arching themes that relate to the challenges faced by users: assistance, trust, layout, the technology paradigm, and language. From these themes, 23 online form design guidelines are derived, which provide valuable guidance for the development of the DIADEM application and for e-Government online form design for an ageing population in general.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Information Systems, Computing and Mathematics, Brunel University, St John’s 205, Uxbridge, UB8 3PH, UK

    Arthur G. Money, Lorna Lines, Senaka Fernando & Anthony D. Elliman

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  1. Arthur G. Money
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  2. Lorna Lines
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  3. Senaka Fernando
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  4. Anthony D. Elliman
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Correspondence to Arthur G. Money.

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Money, A.G., Lines, L., Fernando, S. et al. e-Government online forms: design guidelines for older adults in Europe. Univ Access Inf Soc 10, 1–16 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-010-0191-y

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