Universal Design for Web Applications

Growth Opportunity

Â	As the Baby Boom generation ages, more and more people will face the challenges of reduced dexterity, vision, and hearing. So enabling accessible technology is a growth opportunity...[3]	Â
Â	--Steve Ballmer, 2001

Designing for a variety of situations and abilities can not only change your perspective, but it can also increase your audience. Consider how the world is changing and what that means for people. In 2000, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that 7–10% of the world’s population (500 million people) live with a disability.^[4] In the U.S., 1 in 5 people lives with a disability.^[5]

This number is expected to grow as people live longer—for example, predictions indicate that by 2011, people over 65 will make up 25% of Japan’s population. According to the WHO, the fastest growing population group in industrial nations is the 80-and-over segment.^[6]

There are two factors that tell us to pay attention to the number of older users on the Web. First, users in the 49–64 age group are coming online in increasing numbers, and with good reason: their stock portfolios, pay stubs, tax filing, and health-care information are now on the Web. These late-career workers are very attractive to marketers, particularly because “older” and “richer” are strongly correlated.

The second reason is that sooner or later, they are going to be us. We may be able to read 8-point text on our laptops today, but as we age, it’s likely that that will become more ...