How to Increase Older Adults’ Accessibility to Mobile Technology? The New ECOMODE Camera

Abstract

Designing and developing mobile technology that is able to meet the needs of older adults is fundamental to improve their independent living and expand their social inclusion. However, although mobile technology is nowadays widely present in our every-day activities, older adults continue to lag in its adoption. While exploring what hinders older adults in adopting mobile technology and questioning about how to increase their accessibility to it, the paper presents the ECOMODE project, whose technology based on the Event-Driven Compressive (EDC) paradigm is a possible answer. First, to contextualize our study, the paper describes the ECOMODE technology based on multimodal interaction, i.e. mid-air gestures combined with voice commands. Then, it details the process followed to design the interaction based on the ECOMODE technology, which aims to increase accessibility and usability of mobile devices for older adults.