I'm helping an elderly person with a patient portal, and wow, there are about 4 different problems ranging from unclear instructions to pages that don't work well when the phone is zoomed in enough for an older person to actually read the text.
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I'm helping an elderly person with a patient portal, and wow, there are about 4 different problems ranging from unclear instructions to pages that don't work well when the phone is zoomed in enough for an older person to actually read the text.
Plus, the iPhone keeps popping up unhelpful gunk.
This person isn't particularly afraid of technology either, but they literally can't do it.
I now think every web developer should be forced to walk through their processes with an 85-year-old.
@grammargirl the app my 79 year old husband has to use to order his medicines has, at one point, two buttons that should say yes and no. Or maybe confirm and deny. But instead some hip tech bro decided they would say 'sounds good to me' and 'change'
Every time he asks me which one means yes
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I'm helping an elderly person with a patient portal, and wow, there are about 4 different problems ranging from unclear instructions to pages that don't work well when the phone is zoomed in enough for an older person to actually read the text.
Plus, the iPhone keeps popping up unhelpful gunk.
This person isn't particularly afraid of technology either, but they literally can't do it.
I now think every web developer should be forced to walk through their processes with an 85-year-old.
@grammargirl This is why having a team of testers with disabilities can avoid this type of experience.
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I'm helping an elderly person with a patient portal, and wow, there are about 4 different problems ranging from unclear instructions to pages that don't work well when the phone is zoomed in enough for an older person to actually read the text.
Plus, the iPhone keeps popping up unhelpful gunk.
This person isn't particularly afraid of technology either, but they literally can't do it.
I now think every web developer should be forced to walk through their processes with an 85-year-old.
@grammargirl the team I'm on has put accessibility as our number one priority for years now. We think it's the right thing to do, in general, but especially because we maintain a public university website!
It is so surprising to me when I meet other web developers and I mention that such-and-such new trend/feature wouldn't be accessible and they say "so?"
Or when I mention spending time with our technical writers to make the copy on our forms easy to understand and they say "why?"
Clear instructions don't only benefit 80 year olds, or people with limited comprehension, it just saves your brain a few processor cycles.
Given how much of our lives are managed by web apps, I think everyone's lives would be happier if companies and project managers were mindful of basic user experience issues when scoping out the budget for these things.
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I'm helping an elderly person with a patient portal, and wow, there are about 4 different problems ranging from unclear instructions to pages that don't work well when the phone is zoomed in enough for an older person to actually read the text.
Plus, the iPhone keeps popping up unhelpful gunk.
This person isn't particularly afraid of technology either, but they literally can't do it.
I now think every web developer should be forced to walk through their processes with an 85-year-old.
@grammargirl
Hell I would be satisfied if they just had to walk thru their own process. You cannot tell me the assholes who build this stuff test it. You cant. -
I'm helping an elderly person with a patient portal, and wow, there are about 4 different problems ranging from unclear instructions to pages that don't work well when the phone is zoomed in enough for an older person to actually read the text.
Plus, the iPhone keeps popping up unhelpful gunk.
This person isn't particularly afraid of technology either, but they literally can't do it.
I now think every web developer should be forced to walk through their processes with an 85-year-old.
After dealing with the United States medical system a bit in the last few years I’ve become convinced they want you to die so they don’t have to help you.
Not everyone, of course, but the systems as a whole. You really HAVE to stay on top of them and keep track of things yourself or nothing happens.
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I'm helping an elderly person with a patient portal, and wow, there are about 4 different problems ranging from unclear instructions to pages that don't work well when the phone is zoomed in enough for an older person to actually read the text.
Plus, the iPhone keeps popping up unhelpful gunk.
This person isn't particularly afraid of technology either, but they literally can't do it.
I now think every web developer should be forced to walk through their processes with an 85-year-old.
@grammargirl We are supposed to... part of any website build, other than the steps prior to building it, include usability and accessability reviews... websites that fail these two important reviews usually get sued by the ADA lawyers who are looking to make a quick buck suing and settling with website owners when their sites fail the most basic navigation and accessability requirements. If the site you are speaking about is poorly built or fails the ADA accessibility, report them... usually the weight of litigation tends to light a fire under the website owners to fix the issues post haste. Weird pop ups or unclear direction are all part of that accessability and usability aspect of a good, easy to use website.
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I'm helping an elderly person with a patient portal, and wow, there are about 4 different problems ranging from unclear instructions to pages that don't work well when the phone is zoomed in enough for an older person to actually read the text.
Plus, the iPhone keeps popping up unhelpful gunk.
This person isn't particularly afraid of technology either, but they literally can't do it.
I now think every web developer should be forced to walk through their processes with an 85-year-old.
@grammargirl It’s not “every web developer,” but rather the huge monopoly software-to-hospitals companies, who really don’t care about end users, just that hospitals buy the package. Ask any Doctor who has to use DME software.
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I'm helping an elderly person with a patient portal, and wow, there are about 4 different problems ranging from unclear instructions to pages that don't work well when the phone is zoomed in enough for an older person to actually read the text.
Plus, the iPhone keeps popping up unhelpful gunk.
This person isn't particularly afraid of technology either, but they literally can't do it.
I now think every web developer should be forced to walk through their processes with an 85-year-old.
Test for robustness
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I'm helping an elderly person with a patient portal, and wow, there are about 4 different problems ranging from unclear instructions to pages that don't work well when the phone is zoomed in enough for an older person to actually read the text.
Plus, the iPhone keeps popping up unhelpful gunk.
This person isn't particularly afraid of technology either, but they literally can't do it.
I now think every web developer should be forced to walk through their processes with an 85-year-old.
@grammargirl Similar experience: 70+ yo person having to deal with expired X.509 certificates (.gov.hu app) - what are these devs smoking?? -
@grammargirl the app my 79 year old husband has to use to order his medicines has, at one point, two buttons that should say yes and no. Or maybe confirm and deny. But instead some hip tech bro decided they would say 'sounds good to me' and 'change'
Every time he asks me which one means yes
@Tattooed_Mummy @grammargirl "Sounds good to me" is a weird OK, but it doesn't seem unclear either?
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I'm helping an elderly person with a patient portal, and wow, there are about 4 different problems ranging from unclear instructions to pages that don't work well when the phone is zoomed in enough for an older person to actually read the text.
Plus, the iPhone keeps popping up unhelpful gunk.
This person isn't particularly afraid of technology either, but they literally can't do it.
I now think every web developer should be forced to walk through their processes with an 85-year-old.
@grammargirl I'm especially not a fan of pages whose basic, core functionality changes on mobile. If you need to change how it's arranged, I understand, but let me at least navigate all of it. I've taken to toggling desktop mode (and having to scroll all around a huge page of tiny text) to check whether anything's missing.
Mostly I've given up on doing meaningful things on mobile. I need my laptop.
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I'm helping an elderly person with a patient portal, and wow, there are about 4 different problems ranging from unclear instructions to pages that don't work well when the phone is zoomed in enough for an older person to actually read the text.
Plus, the iPhone keeps popping up unhelpful gunk.
This person isn't particularly afraid of technology either, but they literally can't do it.
I now think every web developer should be forced to walk through their processes with an 85-year-old.
I think the problems with those portals go far beyond an 85 yr old's perception.
Everytime I go to another doctor they enroll me in a different web portal. Without exception, the actual doctor's in those offices have all expressed to me how much their portal sucks. And they do. Big Time. I'm in three of them now.
My doctors encourage me not to use the portals for anything other than looking up test results. And some of the portals suck for doing that too.
One of the 3 I'm in got hacked and my info is now in the hands of whoever. Medical offices are not good with network security policy.
So why do they have them? Insurance companies force them to, and the cost of obtaining and maintaining said useless portals is passed along to patients.
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@Tattooed_Mummy @grammargirl "Sounds good to me" is a weird OK, but it doesn't seem unclear either?
@stilescrisis @grammargirl its the fact the other option isn't no. So you are thinking, I want to make the order, is that I'm changing the order or do I think the order sounds good? Plus at 79 the phrase 'sounds good' isn't something he would ever say. It's just not a form of speech he's used to and it's unnecessarily complicated
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@stilescrisis @grammargirl its the fact the other option isn't no. So you are thinking, I want to make the order, is that I'm changing the order or do I think the order sounds good? Plus at 79 the phrase 'sounds good' isn't something he would ever say. It's just not a form of speech he's used to and it's unnecessarily complicated
@Tattooed_Mummy @grammargirl I don't know. "That sounds good" is plain, simple English to me. My 70-something parents would understand it perfectly fine. Is this an American vs British English thing?
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I'm helping an elderly person with a patient portal, and wow, there are about 4 different problems ranging from unclear instructions to pages that don't work well when the phone is zoomed in enough for an older person to actually read the text.
Plus, the iPhone keeps popping up unhelpful gunk.
This person isn't particularly afraid of technology either, but they literally can't do it.
I now think every web developer should be forced to walk through their processes with an 85-year-old.
@grammargirl
To every product developer, including web developers, LARGER FONTS PLEASE.Signed, person cursing you in absentia for using tiny fonts
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I'm helping an elderly person with a patient portal, and wow, there are about 4 different problems ranging from unclear instructions to pages that don't work well when the phone is zoomed in enough for an older person to actually read the text.
Plus, the iPhone keeps popping up unhelpful gunk.
This person isn't particularly afraid of technology either, but they literally can't do it.
I now think every web developer should be forced to walk through their processes with an 85-year-old.
@grammargirl It's fairly simple:
If you're sending someone a PDF (or similar) via a text or an "app" then FFS also send an email so that the poor punter can read it on a real screen.
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@grammargirl
To every product developer, including web developers, LARGER FONTS PLEASE.Signed, person cursing you in absentia for using tiny fonts
Seconded!
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@grammargirl
To every product developer, including web developers, LARGER FONTS PLEASE.Signed, person cursing you in absentia for using tiny fonts
@shansterable @grammargirl As long as we're here, this should apply to age dates on bottles of pasta sauce, too. Dinky fonts in black with tomato sauce behind them are not helpful.
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I'm helping an elderly person with a patient portal, and wow, there are about 4 different problems ranging from unclear instructions to pages that don't work well when the phone is zoomed in enough for an older person to actually read the text.
Plus, the iPhone keeps popping up unhelpful gunk.
This person isn't particularly afraid of technology either, but they literally can't do it.
I now think every web developer should be forced to walk through their processes with an 85-year-old.
@grammargirl or just forced to use the app they developed for the purpose it was developed. I'll bet none of the coders of that portal actually have to use it
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I'm helping an elderly person with a patient portal, and wow, there are about 4 different problems ranging from unclear instructions to pages that don't work well when the phone is zoomed in enough for an older person to actually read the text.
Plus, the iPhone keeps popping up unhelpful gunk.
This person isn't particularly afraid of technology either, but they literally can't do it.
I now think every web developer should be forced to walk through their processes with an 85-year-old.
@grammargirl I feel this so much. I’ve helped family members with various medical sites and trying to get some things done has been possible only because I have a lot of technical skills and worked something out that should have been obvious. It absurd how broken some of these are. Or just obnoxious in other ways. One hospital system makes me sign unchanged paperwork for nearly every appointment no matter how recent the last was. Another one - that uses the same underlying platform! - has been configured to only ask once a year.
I worked somewhere previously that did a lot of software development for payment services. I noticed that a lot of the issue with bad user experience in the software for internal staff (e.g. sales, support folks, etc) came of the developers having no concrete experience of USING the processes they were writing the software to do. I wonder how much that comes into play with healthcare platforms. Wouldn’t be surprised if it’s A Lot.
