AARP online course - needs Flash? really, hackfest!

Dearest AARP,

 

so I turned 49 a few years ago, and you instantly wanted me to become a member since I was becoming 50 years of age. I declined, yet some of my friends are members for good reasons. A lot like my VA Veteran friends.

 

So, a client comes to me, and then three more about this AARP online driving course they take to reduce their insurance and other driving costs. Great idea! Help AARP members stay more aware of the existing laws that have been on the books for nearly 50 years. Stop means stop, Green means go, etc.

 

Yet, your website is a mess when it comes to requiring Adobe Flash. Really? Flash, still? You know that is a huge Internet security violation.

 

So, my clients trying your AARP site for driver education needs flash, and they don't know which browser let alone with username and password to use. All I can say is you are the next to be breached by hackers, if not already.

 

Your website is very vibrant and colorful, but way too much for the older generation. These are not spring chickens who know how to navigate multiple tabs, look at small text, know how to use their peripheral vision. they have tunnel vision and need to be walked through these things like step 1, step 2, and not with some flash FLASH graphic and some audio that is actually very annoying. let them change the voice over as well. let them play with that. I believe that would be cool. choose your agent, bot, guide, AI, and their ethnicity, language, gender, education level. Now you are making it fun to learn how to keep ones drivers license.

 

FYI - The flash download and installation is a pain and not easy to find on Adobe (go to footer, click download | install, uncheck all the unwanted add-ons - thanks no thanks McAfee, and then not know what to do. Wait, just doing the last part most people do not know how to navigate efficiently if they were born before the year of 1980.

 

So, moral of the story. don't use flash. recommend Firefox, not Chrome to your website. Microsoft finally admitted to not using Internet Explorer. What does that leave? for a PC, not much, but for the Mac folks, that is a whole nother story.

 

so, let's get it together, clean up your website technology and keep it simple and browser friendly, fast, easy, secure and not alot of overhead in flash graphics and audio. I do like the audio that just runs and runs and does not shut up, but hey, it's your business, and some genius thought it up. Probably runs great on an i-5 or i-7 with 16GB of RAM, high speed Internet, 27" screen flat screen, and an 1TB SSD. Try that same thing on grannies PC which is an Acer E150 Celeron 1.8Ghz with Vista/Win7/(no way 10!), 2GB RAM (puhleez be 4GB RAM), 80GB SATA drive, 5/2 DSL (dialup? say what?) or 17" CRT monitor (i'll just have to give her a 20" flat screen free - too painful to watch her squint)...  no less battery powered speakers with the words Radio Shack on them - 2Watt. woohoo!! . ;-) i digress.

 

Back to Flash? Really? so, google chrome has it's own per se flash engine, and firefox you install it and watch out internet, her comes the flash corruption, popup blockers, etc.

 

if you want elderly people or those in the geriatric category to take an online test, please test the darn thing on some real world customers, and if you say you did, and think you did, obviously the results prove otherwise.

 

more to come...