Older people and e-government in Portugal

The average life expectancy has been steadily increasing in recent years. Historically, there has been noticed that each new technology created by man brings with it a high power of inclusion or exclusion. In this sense, older people have some identified limitations on the use of information and communication technologies (ICT). This paper analyzes, according to the requirements and limitations of the senior public, the websites interfaces of public entities that provide the basic services of e-government. It is proposed an evaluation method which includes in its criteria the requirements of the interface design to overcome some limitations of seniors. Besides providing an individual assessment, this method also allows a comparative study of the websites under analysis.