Age related cognitive impairments and diffusion of assistive web-base technologies

Abstract

Several researchers argue that age related cognitive impairments have detrimental affect on use of web services by older adults. However little and systematic applied research has been conducted on how age related cognitive impairments might affect the usage of web services by older adults. Undoubtedly, understanding the relationship between the cognitive changes that accompany aging and their impact on older adults' usage of web services will be beneficial for designing web services for this group. The paper demonstrates how such understanding has been employed to develop an assistive technology in order to improve older adults' interaction with online forms (e.g. state benefit application form). However the paper acknowledges that this new assistive technology does not guarantee that people with age related cognitive impairments accept it, as diffusion of innovation research shows that getting a new technology adopted even when it has noticeable advantage is often very difficult. Consequently the paper identifies critical factors that need to be considered when adopting this new assistive technology, drawing on Rogers (2003) theory of Diffusion of Innovations. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.