Age, Technology Usage, and Cognitive Characteristics in Relation to Perceived Disorientation and Reported Website Ease of Use
Michael Crabb, Vicki L. Hanson · 2014 · ASSETS '14: Proceedings of the 16th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility · doi:10.1145/2661334.2661356
Summary
This paper challenges the common practice in HCI research of using chronological age as the primary metric for understanding differences in web browsing experience between older and younger adults. Twenty participants (12 older adults aged 63-90, M=73.66; and 8 younger adults aged 19-29, M=22.12) completed information retrieval tasks across 30 websites from five categories (health, shopping, news, government, banking) and then self-reported their perceived disorientation and website ease of use via Likert-scale questionnaires. Alongside age, the study measured Internet usage, Internet confidence, and four cognitive factors: fluid intelligence (inductive reasoning via Letter Sets Test), processing speed (Number Comparison Test), short-term memory (Auditory Number Span), and long-term memory (Meaningful Memory Test). Multiple regression models were built incrementally, adding age alone, then technology factors, then cognitive measures.
Key findings
Age accounted for as little as -0.6% to 1.6% of variance in browsing experience measures—essentially no predictive power. In contrast, when Internet usage and Internet confidence were added, the models explained 40.5% of perceived disorientation variance and 28.9% of ease of use variance. Adding cognitive factors pushed these to 48.4% and 33.7% respectively. Internet confidence was the strongest predictor across all models (β=-.740 for disorientation, β=.683 for ease of use), far outweighing Internet usage amount. Perceptual speed was a significant predictor of browsing experience (β=-.538), while surprisingly, fluid intelligence (inductive reasoning) did not significantly predict browsing experience despite previous literature suggesting it would. An interesting asymmetry emerged: high Internet confidence reduced disorientation for older adults but increased it for younger adults, suggesting fundamentally different relationships between confidence and experience across generations.
Relevance
This research has important implications for how the accessibility community thinks about age-related design. The "deficit model" approach—making text bigger, buttons larger, interfaces simpler for older adults—assumes age is the driving factor, but this study shows it is not. Internet confidence and cognitive processing speed matter far more than chronological age. For web designers and accessibility practitioners, this means focusing on building user confidence through clear onboarding, consistent interfaces, and progressive disclosure rather than age-targeted design. The finding also challenges the validity of older-vs-younger comparison studies throughout HCI, arguing that researchers should measure and report cognitive characteristics and technology experience rather than relying on age as a proxy variable. This has methodological implications for the entire field of accessible technology research with older adults.
Tags: older adults · aging · cognitive accessibility · web accessibility · fluid intelligence · usability · information retrieval · digital inclusion