Generic Requirements for Inclusive Healthcare Software: Supporting Older Adults and People with Intellectual and Developmental Disability

As healthcare technology advances, it is important to ensure that everyone benefits from healthcare software, regardless of age or ability. That is why our research team has been working to identify and encapsulate the unique needs of two groups when developing software systems: older adults and people with mild intellectual and developmental disabilities. Through our research, we have developed design patterns that software engineers can use to create more usable healthcare software to support these groups. These patterns identify the generic requirements for usability including accessibility, crucial for creating software that meets the needs of marginalised populations. In this paper, we describe the steps we undertook to identify and develop these requirements. We discover many overlapping needs of these two cohorts. Our research aims to benefit older adults and people with mild intellectual and developmental disabilities and improve the lives of many others facing similar challenges. As we expand our research to other cohorts, we will be able to identify additional generic requirements that make healthcare software development more inclusive and effective.