Animation in public transports: can it facilitate information accessibility for elderly people?

Cognitive functions could be affected by aging: speed processing, inhibition abilities, working memory, visuo-spatial abilities. Nevertheless, these functions could also be involved in comprehension of graphic information. In this paper we examined whether in public transports, animated graphic information instead of spoken information, could facilitate the comprehension of disruption messages. Such alternative, could improve public transport accessibility for elderly people by compensating cognitive decline due to aging. Fifty-two participants, two groups of young and older people, were asked to understand and compare series of train traffic disruption messages delivered via three different visual formats. The animated presentation was superior to the two static presentations conditions. This format facilitates the inhibition of irrelevant information by directing attention temporally and spatially to thematically relevant events. The animated presentation helped older participants to establish a spatio-temporal continuum between local events.