132. WORKING WITH SERVICE USERS TO DESIGN AN ACCESSIBLE HEALTH WEBSITE FOR PEOPLE WITH ARTHRITIS AND LOWER LEVELS OF DIGITAL LITERACY

Abstract

Background: National clinical guidelines support the development of effective self-management strategies for people with arthritis to manage joint pain and keep active. Digital and online resources are used by people to access information and make decisions about their health. While there is some evidence that online resources are effective to support self-management in long-term conditions, it is also reported that many health information websites are not inclusive for people with lower health literacy and digital literacy levels. This project aimed to engage service users from a community enterprise project set up to support and educate people with lower digital literacy skills to review and inform the development of an accessible and inclusive selfmanagement website tool applicable for people with arthritic joint pain - the Safer Ageing Tool. Method(s): Two forum groups were held. These were unstructured, interactive one hour sessions designed to encourage conversation and discussion. Following formal consent, each group was introduced to the website and service users accessed the online self-management Safer Ageing Tool on a tablet or laptop computer to work through the digital health website. A think aloud approach was used to generate service users' immediate views of navigating through the website. The conversations were recorded and transcribed. The most frequent occurring issues for people in relation to website accessibility and usability were identified after reviewing and coding the conversations. Result(s): Ten service users (4 men, 6 women) aged 22-68 years, participated. Six were adult learner instructor volunteers and 4 were adult digital literacy learners. All had experience of the issues surrounding low digital literacy. Factors that most facilitated use included; aesthetics of the site related to the size of text, icons and pictures, type of graphics and colour; the content and how interactive the website was; the information provided and how trustworthy it was deemed to be and the ease of physically accessing the website from different geographical locations. Service users described design factors that promoted website use as friendly, jargon free, basic, clear, unassuming, short, straight forward and relatable and those that discouraged use as corporate, stupid, text heavy, overcomplicated, hard to read, fake and clinical. Conclusion(s): Service users identified 4 key areas for an online selfmanagement website applicable for people with joint pain to be appealing and accessible. The look of the site was the most important factor to get right. Use of colour, large text, images and icons were identified as positive factors. Overcomplicated text that offers little chance to interact with the content is unlikely to engage people with arthritis and lower levels of digital literacy. While trusting the source of the information was recognized as relevant this was not a priority for increasing website accessibility.