HT '07: Proceedings of the eighteenth conference on Hypertext and hypermedia

Abstract

As people age they will hold the same pattern of thinking, acting, communication style and behaviours which they learn from living in a specific social environment. Regardless of demographics and geographic differences, older adults share similar age-related changes in perception, cognition and mobility that profoundly affect their daily activities including computer tasks. The problem is more apparent for Malaysian older adults who are not only struggling with their age-related difficulties but at the same time need to use a user-interface which has been designed out of their culture. As localization is not well-practised in Malaysia, the English user-interface is one of the biggest barriers for older adults who could not read the language. Thus, this paper reports the current trend of computer usage among Malaysian older adults and the roles of culture in user-interface design for this fast-growing user group in Malaysia.