 The EinfachWir Homepage
Starting position
At the start of the project the range of products for online communication for seniors in Austria was dominated by institutions close to the government and/or some political party. The independent, professionally created and highly interactive web-portal of EinfachWir fully meets the needs of the target group’s independence and heterogeneity. Access to and participation in modern information technology improves the possibilities especially for the elderly in today’s information society; this way elderly people may partake in a social network longer and more easily.
Interface
An essential objective of the project was the usability of the web-portal. In addition to standard accessibility tests the results from tests with adaptive interfaces, alternative input and output methods and adapted interface paradigms influenced the system development. Ongoing usability tests especially towards the end of the development phase ensured an optimal adaptation to the needs of the target group. Those tests were supervised by an ethical researcher.
Thematic cross linking
The interface combines thematically similar topics from different sources of information (reference database, user-generated content, external information sources) and group them by relevance and topicality.
Regional aspects
Users who provide the name of their home town to the system are be presented with content related to the catchment area of the town preferably. It is possible to define regional groups, too.
Communication
Existing forms of information exchange like bulletin boards, blogs and chats are combined and integrated in a way that users with little or even no experience with these types of technology are enabled to communicate in a very flexible way. This way the full potential of communication shall be reactivated and used, thus overcoming a possibly existing physical handicap.
Service
In addition to an extensive reference database with continuously updated general information, experts are available to give specific answers and provide specialized knowledge for a wide range of topics. A widespread network of partners will offer the possibility to book journeys or order groceries by using the web-portal.
Project Partners
Funding Information
The project 'EinfachWir - das Mitmach WEB' was partly funded (contract id 820996) within the benefit research programme by the Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology.
Web Portal
The web portal will open soon at  http://www.einfachwir.at
|
