Older adults are the most underserved audience in museum technology, and the least likely to tell you about it.
They won't fill out a feedback form complaining about button sizes. They'll just put the device down, or never pick it up. A visitor who has spent decades building knowledge about art or history, who came specifically because they care, quietly opts out because the interface made them feel incompetent. That's a failure worth fixing.
The instinct at most institutions is to create a "simple mode": strip features, enlarge everything, add a big help button. This gets it backwards. Older visitors don't need a dumbed-down experience. They often want more depth than the average visitor. What they need is an interface that doesn't punish them for imprecise touches, doesn't change states unexpectedly, and doesn't assume they already know how smartphone apps work.
The real problem isn't comprehension
When we talk about designing for older adults, the conversation usually drifts toward content: shorter sentences, simpler vocabulary, slower narration. This misses the point entirely.
Most older museum visitors have no trouble understanding complex content. Many have deeper subject knowledge than the people who wrote the guide. A retired art teacher listening to a description of Caravaggio's use of chiaroscuro doesn't need it simplified. She might know more about it than your script does.
The actual friction is mechanical. Fingers that tap imprecisely. A double-tap that accidentally zooms the screen to 400%. Text that gets highlighted when someone rests their thumb on the display. A back button that's 32 pixels wide, sitting right next to a menu button. These aren't comprehension failures. They're interface failures. And every one of them erodes confidence.
We've watched this happen in testing. A visitor touches something, the screen changes, and they don't know what happened or how to get back. They try to fix it, which makes it worse. Within thirty seconds they've decided the technology isn't for them. The content was never the problem.
Small details that prevent big frustrations
The fixes that matter most for older adults aren't dramatic redesigns. They're small, specific decisions that prevent the most common accidental interactions.
Minimum tap target sizes. Apple's Human Interface Guidelines recommend 44x44 points. For an older audience, bigger is better. Every interactive element should be easy to hit on the first try, even with less precise finger movements. This goes beyond buttons to include list items, links, close icons, anything tappable.
Disabled text selection. On most mobile interfaces, a long press selects text. For younger users this is a feature. For older users it's a constant accident: they press slightly too long and suddenly blue highlight bars appear across the screen with copy/paste handles they didn't ask for. Disabling text selection in the guide interface eliminates an entire category of confusion.
Controlled zoom behavior. Double-tap-to-zoom is another default that causes problems. An older visitor taps a button twice because the first tap didn't seem to register, and now the page is zoomed in with the navigation cut off. They don't know they zoomed. They just see that the screen looks wrong. Disabling accidental zoom while keeping intentional pinch-to-zoom (for images where it's useful) is a meaningful improvement.
Minimal buttons, maximum clarity. Every button on screen is a potential wrong tap. The fewer choices at any moment, the lower the chance of ending up somewhere unexpected. Design flows with clear primary actions rather than screens full of options. Not because older adults can't handle options, but because clutter increases the cost of every interaction.
These are the "weird clickings" that frustrate older visitors most: the phone doing something they didn't intend, with no obvious way to undo it. Preventing them doesn't require a separate interface. It requires defaults that are forgiving of imprecise input.
At Musa, these decisions are already built in. Text selection is disabled in the tour view. Zoom behaviors are controlled. Tap targets are sized generously. These aren't options buried in a settings menu. They're the defaults, because they make the experience better for everyone, not just older visitors.
Font sizing: let the device handle it
A common question from museums: "What font size should we use for older visitors?" The answer is that you shouldn't pick one.
Both iOS and Android have system-level text size settings. Users who need larger text have usually already configured this on their device. It's one of the first things an optician or a family member helps set up. An audio guide that respects those device settings automatically displays at the right size for each visitor.
This works better than building a font size toggle into the guide itself. A toggle means the visitor has to find it, understand what it does, and adjust it. System-level settings mean it just works. The visitor opens the guide and sees text at the size they've already chosen for everything on their phone.
The technical requirement is straightforward: use dynamic type (iOS) or scalable text (Android) and test that your layouts don't break at larger sizes. Many apps claim to support accessibility text sizes but overflow or truncate at 200%. Test it properly.
Voice interaction changes the equation
Speaking is not a learned digital skill. Typing on a phone keyboard requires fine motor control, familiarity with autocorrect, and comfort with small targets. Speaking requires none of that.
Many older adults are more comfortable talking than typing. They grew up using telephones, not touchscreens. A voice-first interaction model (tap one large microphone button and ask your question) removes the most intimidating part of the interface entirely.
This matters for museum guides specifically because the alternative is usually a text search field. Looking for a specific exhibit? Type the name. Have a question about a painting? Type it out. For someone who hunts and pecks on a phone keyboard, that's a real barrier. For someone who can just say "Where is the Rembrandt room?" it's nothing.
Voice also solves a problem that text can't: asking for help with the technology itself. An older visitor who doesn't understand what a button does can ask "How do I go back to the tour?" and get an answer. An AI guide that understands its own interface can troubleshoot in real time, in plain language. No help documentation, no FAQ page. Just a question and a direct answer.
We've found this to be one of the most underappreciated benefits of AI-powered guides for older audiences. The AI handles content and tech support at the same time.
Don't build a "senior version"
The temptation is strong to create a separate experience for older visitors. A "senior mode" with larger buttons and fewer features. An "easy" option on the welcome screen.
This approach has two problems. First, it's patronizing. Most older adults won't select an option that labels them as needing help, even if they do need the accommodations it provides. The label is the barrier.
Second, it fragments your product. Now you're maintaining two versions of the interface. Updates to one might not reach the other. Bugs get fixed in the primary version and persist in the simplified one. The "senior mode" becomes second-class software that nobody on the team is excited to maintain.
The better path is universal defaults that work for everyone. Large tap targets don't hurt younger users. Disabled text selection doesn't limit anyone. Clear, minimal button layouts improve the experience across all age groups. You don't need a separate mode. You need a primary mode that was designed with care.
This is the same principle that drives curb cuts in urban design. Curb cuts were mandated for wheelchair users. They turned out to benefit everyone: parents with strollers, travelers with luggage, delivery workers with carts. Designing for the most constrained use case improved the experience universally.
Testing with real users, and what to watch for
The most important thing you can do is test your guide with actual older adults. Not a simulation, not a persona exercise, not your team member squinting at a phone. Find five or six visitors over 65, hand them the guide at the start of their visit, and watch.
Don't narrate. Don't help. Just observe.
You'll see things you never would have predicted. The visitor who holds the phone at arm's length and can't read the stop number. The one who accidentally opens the share sheet and doesn't know what it is. The one who tries to swipe back and pulls down the notification shade instead.
Pay attention to three things specifically:
Where do they pause? A hesitation before tapping usually means the visitor isn't sure what will happen. That's an interface that isn't communicating clearly.
Where do they recover, or not? Everyone will make accidental taps. The question is whether they can get back to where they were. If a wrong tap leads to a screen with no obvious "back" path, you've found a real problem.
When do they stop using it? There's often a specific moment. Not a gradual fade, but a specific interaction that breaks their confidence. Find that moment. Fix that interaction.
Three rounds of this testing, with fixes in between, will do more for your older audience than any amount of theoretical accessibility work.
What the data says about this audience
Older adults are disproportionately valuable museum visitors. They visit more frequently, stay longer, spend more in gift shops, and are more likely to become members. In many institutions, visitors over 60 account for 30-40% of total attendance.
They're also the demographic most likely to use an audio guide if one is available. They're there to learn. They came on purpose. They have time to do the full tour, not the sprint-through-the-highlights that a family with young children might manage.
But adoption data tells a different story. When audio guides require app downloads, account creation, or complex navigation, older adult usage drops sharply. The willingness is there. The patience for technology friction is not.
Every barrier you remove between "I want to use the guide" and "I'm listening to content" disproportionately benefits this group. QR code to web app with no download. No account required. Guide starts playing within seconds. Each simplification in the access flow has an outsized effect on older adult adoption.
Getting this right matters
Older adults aren't an edge case. They're often your core audience. Treating them as an afterthought, or worse, as a separate category that needs a watered-down experience, misses both the ethical and the business case.
The good news is that the changes required are specific and testable. You don't need to rebuild your audio guide. You need to audit the touch targets, disable the accidental interactions, support system font sizes, and put a microphone button where it's easy to reach. Then test with real people and fix what breaks.
If you're working on an audio guide and want to make sure it works for your full audience, including the visitors who care the most, we'd be glad to talk through what we've learned.