Accessibility Recommendations for Designing Better Mobile Application User Interfaces for Seniors

TL;DR

This paper investigates accessibility barriers in mobile UIs for seniors through a dual-phase, user-centered study that informs an adaptive UI design tool, AdaptForge. By combining elderly end-user insights with standards analysis (WCAG, ISO 9241-171, platform guidelines) and developer perspectives, it derives eight senior personas and a comprehensive set of actionable recommendations spanning text readability, contrast, touch targets, screen size, error handling, navigation, audio modalities, and run-time personalization. The work demonstrates how run-time adaptations, when carefully controlled and user-driven, can improve accessibility without sacrificing autonomy, while highlighting risks of complexity and intrusiveness. The practical impact lies in providing software practitioners with a structured, evidence-based framework to develop inclusive mobile apps for seniors, with implications for broader domains and future research into cognitive impairments and non-retail contexts.

Abstract

Seniors represent a growing user base for mobile applications; however, many apps fail to adequately address their accessibility challenges and usability preferences. To investigate this issue, we conducted an exploratory focus group study with 16 senior participants, from which we derived an initial set of user personas highlighting key accessibility and personalisation barriers. These personas informed the development of a model-driven engineering toolset, which was used to generate adaptive mobile app prototypes tailored to seniors' needs. We then conducted a second focus group study with 22 seniors to evaluate these prototypes and validate our findings. Based on insights from both studies, we developed a refined set of personas and a series of accessibility and personalisation recommendations grounded in empirical data, prior research, accessibility standards, and developer resources, aimed at supporting software practitioners in designing more inclusive mobile applications.

Figures (14)

• Figure 1: A persona representing a fictional user named Carl, who is confident in using technology due to his professional background, yet still encounters significant accessibility barriers in mobile applications due to vision and mobility impairments.
• Figure 2: An overview of the focus group study design
• Figure 3: An overview of the AdaptForge tool that is being used to generate adapted app UI instances based on the preliminary persona corpus
• Figure 4: A persona representing a fictional senior user, Judy, illustrates the challenges faced due to low vision, which creates accessibility barriers when attempting to read text on her applications.
• Figure 5: This section presents adapted user interface examples derived from an initial set of non-adapted mobile app UIs. The adaptations include: (i) increasing body text size from 12pt to 24pt; (ii) applying a font weight of 700 to most body text; (iii) changing font colour from grey to black for enhanced readability; and (iv) enhancing the form fields in the Add Shipping Address form with more prominent borders to improve visual distinction.