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by Vinalin 3324 days ago
I think something mentioned in the article that's usually not mentioned is the loss of motor skills as you age. I find that for myself, a 20-something year old web developer, it's easy to fall into the 'Everyone on the internet is like me' mindset. However I try to maintain perspective by observing my grandparents as they browse the internet on their iPads. The loss of motor skills is easily one of the most frustrating parts of web browsing for them. If they have to try more than twice to click your small hamburger menu that you put conveniently right next to the 'Log out' button, they'll simply give up and move on to the next thing.

An example of what I feel is an elegant solution - They used to have the hardest time playing/pausing YouTube videos when they would rely only on the buttons. However, once I showed them how to play/pause by clicking the entire video, they were relieved and much more appreciative of the technology. I think that this approach is more sound; instead of simply making everything larger, or having larger clickboxes, simply create multiple ways to interact with the content that doesn't interfere with other users. Nobody is upset that you can play/pause videos by clicking on them, but I imagine they would be if the play/pause buttons were 5x larger than they are now.