Websites Your Whole Audience Can Use

Many of my clients serve people who didn’t grow up with the internet, and many more who are over sixty, which describes a large share of Rhode Island and Massachusetts. So when I say I build modern websites, I mean modern in the sense of a well-designed kitchen rather than a nightclub.

Hard for a 75-year-old means hard for everyone

There’s no separate category called senior-friendly design. There’s good design, applied without shortcuts. Text large enough to read without leaning in. Buttons that look like buttons. Pages that hold still. Younger visitors prefer all of this too. The 75-year-old is the test that catches the problems.

What it looks like in practice

• Text you can read. Comfortable sizes, strong contrast between the words and the background, lines that aren’t too long. If anyone has had to zoom your site to read it, the site failed, not the reader.
• Buttons that say what they do. “Get the newsletter” rather than “Submit.” A donate button you can find without hunting. One clear next step per page instead of seven competing ones.
• Nothing that moves without permission. Sliding banners, typing animations, and things that swoop in as you scroll read as lively to designers and as alarming to everyone else. Calm pages feel trustworthy, and trust is the whole point of a non-profit website.
• Forgiving forms. Few fields, clearly labeled, with error messages that say what to fix.
• Comfortable on a phone. Not merely loading on one. For many visitors the phone is the only computer.

Why I care about this

Alongside building websites, I spend time helping individuals, often older adults, with the digital side of life. Sitting next to someone while they meet a website for the first time changes how you design. You stop designing for other designers and start designing for the person at the table.

If your organization serves everyone, your website should too. If you suspect yours doesn’t, I’ll take a look and explain what I find without jargon.