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How Does Ageing Affect our Audiences?
There are multiple factors besides disabilities that can get in the way of efficient and inclusive communication, and ageing is definitely one of them.
If you’ve read some of our previous posts, you’re already aware that seniors respectively account for roughly 16,5 to 19% of the American and Canadian populations. Many of us are also painfully familiar with the fact that as we get older and grayer, life naturally chips away at our cognitive abilities, affecting our senses, such as hearing, sight, and mobility.
As a matter of fact, this is not just an opinion, this is a fact supported by data. A Nielsen Norman Group research has demonstrated that when it comes to consuming content online, we experience, on average, a cumulative 0.8% cognitive loss for every year that we have over the age of 25. And although that research was initially published in 2008, more recent updates from 2019 still confirmed the data right before the COVID-19 pandemic.
So what does a 0.8% of cognitive decline per year mean for our ageing audience members? Well, according to that research, our collective ability to use the web efficiently diminishes with each passing year. In other words, for every 10 years that we add to our lives over the age of 25, we lose an average of 8% of our ability to consume online content efficiently. If you do the math, it looks…
