Guidelines were released in June by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) regarding technical specifications for designing software to be more accessible for the elderly and disabled as well as every user. Similar in scope to guidelines for website accessibility drafted by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the ISO guidelines are “intended to provide a road map to software design that takes into account the varying physical and sensory capabilities of users to ensure that it can be used not only by people with visual, hearing, motor or cognitive disabilities, but also by the elderly, the temporarily disabled, and by those with no disability at all.”
Tom Stewart, chair of the committee that developed the new guidelines, said the goal of the standard is to make computer systems more “usable, in particular, more effective, more efficient and more satisfying for all users. We want all users to be able to live and work in harmony with their computer systems,” Stewart told UK internet legal news service, Out-Law.com.
The software accessibility standard is ISO/TS 16071, “Ergonomics of human-system interaction