Now what was that password again? A more flexible way of identifying and authenticating our seniors

Abstract

The Web offers facilities which can make a huge difference to the lives of users with reduced mobility, something that affects many older users. Users have to be authorized to access restricted websites. This involves a two-step process: identification and authentication. These issues have received scant attention when considering the needs of specific user groups. Web identification and authentication is often treated as a one-size-fits-all problem with ubiquitous use of the password as an authenticator and a variety of different identification mechanisms being used. Neither is tailored to the needs of either the website or the target users. This paper discusses problems related to identification and authentication of older web users, and reports on experiences with field tests of initial solutions.

Keywords:

• Identification
• Authentication
• Seniors

Notes

¹A cookie is a file that is stored on the user's machine which the web browser uses to identify the user at subsequent visits to the same site.

²More than 10 accesses during the evaluation period.