Designing Websites for Older Adults: They're Online, So Build for Them

There's a stubborn assumption in web design that older adults aren't really online. The data says otherwise.

The short answer: most Americans 65 and older are online, and most carry a smartphone. According to Pew Research Center's 2025 survey, 78% of adults 65 and older own a smartphone and 70% have home broadband, while about one in six relies on a phone alone. They're less likely than younger adults to be online constantly, but they're shopping, banking, booking appointments, paying bills and video-calling family. A website that's hard to read or hard to tap isn't just inconvenient for them. It sends them somewhere else.

Designing for older visitors doesn't mean building a separate "senior" site. It means getting the fundamentals right: readable text, strong contrast, big targets, plain language and a site that feels trustworthy. Those same choices make a site better for everyone.

Structural lag: when the world doesn't keep up with aging

The sociologist Matilda White Riley described a pattern she called structural lag. People's lives change faster than the institutions around them. Americans are living longer, healthier, more active lives than earlier generations, but schools, workplaces, housing and public services were built around an older idea of what aging looks like, and they're slow to adjust.

The web is a clear example. Older adults have adopted smartphones and online services in large numbers over the past decade. Many websites, though, are still designed as if every visitor were a 25-year-old with perfect eyesight, a steady hand and the patience to hunt through a hamburger menu. The people adapted. The design hasn't caught up.

That gap matters because aging brings gradual changes that affect how anyone uses a screen:

• Vision: reduced contrast sensitivity, more glare sensitivity and difficulty with small text.
• Motor control: less precise taps and clicks, especially on small buttons and links placed close together.
• Hearing: trouble with audio-only content and videos without captions.
• Memory and attention: more difficulty with cluttered pages, time limits and processes that change from one visit to the next.

None of these are rare. They're a normal part of getting older, and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) address nearly all of them. The W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative publishes guidance on how WCAG maps to the needs of older users, and the overlap is close: a site built to WCAG is a site built for older visitors.

What older adults actually use the internet for

When I first wrote about this topic in 2022, I argued that companies weren't doing enough to show older adults what the internet could do for them. That's still true, but the bigger story now is how much older adults already rely on it:

• Staying connected: video calls and messaging with children and grandchildren who live far away.
• Health: patient portals, prescription refills, telehealth visits and appointment scheduling.
• Money and household: online banking, bill pay and utility accounts.
• Everyday help: voice assistants for reminders, alarms and quick questions.
• Entertainment and learning: streaming, e-books, games and online classes.

That's exactly why design matters. When a patient portal, a borough's bill-pay page or a local shop's booking form is hard to use, older adults bear the cost, or they call the office instead, which costs everyone time.

The trust problem: older adults are prime scam targets

There's another reason design matters for this audience. According to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center, people 60 and older filed more than 200,000 complaints in 2025 and reported about $7.7 billion in losses, a sharp increase over 2024. The most common schemes include phishing, fake tech-support calls, investment fraud and impostors posing as government agencies.

Legitimate websites can help their visitors tell the difference:

• Look official and consistent. Use the same name, logo, colors and contact details everywhere, so visitors can spot a fake.
• Publish real contact information. A phone number, street address and office hours reassure visitors and give them a way to verify a suspicious message.
• State what you'll never ask for. A short line like "We will never ask you to pay by gift card or wire transfer" on a utility, municipal or medical site is simple and effective.
• Keep it secure. HTTPS everywhere, a clean domain, and no surprise pop-ups or redirects that look like scams.

Eight design choices that help older visitors

1. Use readable text. Start body text at a comfortable size, and make sure pages still work when visitors zoom to 200%, as WCAG requires.
2. Raise the contrast. Low-contrast text is the most common accessibility failure on the web. WCAG Level AA calls for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5 to 1 for normal text. Light gray on white rarely passes.
3. Make buttons big and well spaced. WCAG 2.2 sets a minimum target size of 24 by 24 CSS pixels. Bigger is better for anything people tap often, like "Call," "Book" or "Pay."
4. Keep navigation simple and consistent. Put the same menu in the same place on every page, and label it in plain words. Avoid hiding everything behind icons.
5. Write in plain language. Short sentences, familiar words and clear headings help everyone scan a page, and they help readers with any level of memory or attention.
6. Make forms forgiving. Clear labels above each field, examples of the expected format, error messages that explain how to fix the problem, and no surprise timeouts.
7. Caption your videos. And never autoplay audio.
8. Offer a human option. A visible phone number and a contact form give visitors a way out when something doesn't work.

These aren't separate "senior-friendly" features. They're the same practices behind WCAG 2.1 and 2.2 Level AA, which is now the legal standard for state and local government websites and many health care providers. Our guide to website accessibility and the ADA in 2026 covers those rules, and the digital divide in 2026 explains why phone-first design matters for so many residents.

We build these practices into every site we design and maintain through our website development and hosting care plans.

Sources

• Pew Research Center, Internet use, smartphone ownership and digital divides in the U.S. (January 8, 2026)
• Pew Research Center, Share of those 65 and older who are tech users has grown in the past decade (January 13, 2022)
• Federal Bureau of Investigation, Scammers Target Older Adult Victims (2026)
• FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, 2025 Internet Crime Report
• W3C Web Accessibility Initiative, Older Users and Web Accessibility
• W3C, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2

This article began as a college sociology paper by Nathaniel Kober in 2022 and was expanded and updated in October 2026.