Designing user interfaces for severely handicapped persons

This paper addresses the many factors involved in the design of user interfaces for elderly persons and persons with severe disabilities. Interface design must take into consideration new user requirements on top of the requirements of normal users and consider the wider range of user model parameters that must be accommodated to provide adaptation to the user. The paper stresses the great diversity of user needs and questions how such user needs can be met.An example from the ongoing INTERCOMUNICANDO project is presented. A simple game interface was developed and tested to acquire parameters for an advanced user model of severely disabled persons. The results show the need for highly parameterised applications and the need for further research to design frameworks and tools to enable support of many different levels of users by applications.