Try it here
Pick an age under the shop page, from 50 to 80. Watch which text fades first.
Who this is
- About a thirdas much light reaches the eye at 60 as at 20.
- 9 in 10Americans over 65 use the internet.
- 90%of the time, older people blamed themselves, not the site.
What to do on your website
- Make text dark enough: at least 4.5 to 1.
- Set reading text at 16 pixels or more.
- Keep a phone number, not just a website.
More, if you want it
Check your own website with this tool
This is the button you’ll drag.
- Make sure you can see your bookmarks bar, the row just under the address bar. If it isn’t there, press Ctrl + Shift + B, or ⌘ + Shift + B on a Mac.
- Drag the Aging eyes button up into that bar and let go.
- Open your own website and click Aging eyes in the bar. Click it on any page to see it through the eyes of someone around 50. Click again for 70, then 80 with an early cataract, and once more to switch it off. Watch which text fades first.
This works on a computer, in Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Edge. Phones and tablets aren’t set up for it.
Get all 10 tools in one go
One Good Citizens folder with every tool in it. Download the file, then bring it into your browser:
Download the bookmarks file- Chrome: Bookmarks › Import bookmarks and settings › Bookmarks HTML file
- Safari: File › Import From › Bookmarks HTML File
- Firefox: Bookmarks › Manage bookmarks › Import and Backup › Import Bookmarks from HTML
More free tools: Fovea, Color vision, Shaky hand, or all 10.
Why this matters
Think of your mother reading your website on her phone, holding it out at arm’s length. At sixty, the back of the eye receives about a third of the light it did at twenty, as if two of every three bulbs in the room had gone out.
Beside this is a page as it looks through eyes of different ages: softer, dimmer and a little yellow. Pale gray text is usually the first thing to disappear, and if that is where your prices or your phone number live, an older customer simply cannot find them.
A lens that stiffens, a pupil that narrows
Several changes arrive together, so slowly that most people only notice when they start holding their phone at arm’s length.
The lens of the eye stiffens, so it can no longer change shape to focus up close. Doctors call this presbyopia. It usually shows itself between 40 and 451, by 60 nearly everyone has it, and it is worse in dim light.
The pupil gets smaller and the lens slowly turns yellow, so less light reaches the retina, the light-sensing back of the eye: about a third as much at 60 as at 20. That is the dimmed room. Faint differences between shades get harder to see, and the eyes take a little longer to adjust to the dark with every decade. Cataracts cloud the lens further: by 80, more than half of Americans have one or have had one removed, and they make lights seem too bright and colors look faded7.
Nearly two billion people, and your future self
In 2015, about 1.8 billion people2 had presbyopia, and 826 million could not see well up close because they had no glasses, or not good enough ones.
The world is getting older. By 2030, one person in six4 will be over 60, and by 2050 the number of people over 80 will have tripled. Older people are online, too: in the United States, nine in ten8 people over 65 use the internet.
When a website isn’t built for them, they rarely tell you. In one study, people over 65 were 43% slower than younger adults and succeeded far less often, and when they failed they blamed themselves11 90% of the time, not the site. In Britain, nearly a third of over-60s told Age UK in 2025 that life had become harder because services had moved online.
Why the contrast rule is 4.5 to 1
The web’s best-known accessibility number was worked out for the eyesight of a typical eighty-year-old, the person in the dimmest room.
Contrast is how much lighter one color is than the other, written as a ratio: the bigger the first number, the more the words stand out. Older office standards asked for at least 3 to 1 between text and its background. People with 20/40 vision, which the W3C9, the body that sets web standards, notes is commonly reported as typical at about 80, lose about one and a half times their sensitivity to contrast. Three times one and a half is 4.5, the minimum for body text in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), the W3C’s rules for pages everyone can use. It is a floor, worked out for people at the edge, not a target.
All the advice, in full
Treat 4.5 to 1 as the floor
Meet it everywhere, and go well past it for reading text. Pale gray on white is the most common way a page shuts older readers out.
Set reading text at 16 pixels or more
In one study, readers over 65 found 14-point text easier than 12 and preferred it. On a screen that means at least 16px for anything people must read.
Let people zoom
Text should grow to 200% without anything being cut off or overlapping (WCAG 1.4.4), and the layout should survive people adding their own line and letter spacing (1.4.12).
Avoid pale blue and thin type
A yellowing lens makes blues and greens harder to tell apart, and thin strokes lose the most contrast. Prefer sturdy weights and strong color differences.
Keep things where they were
“I hate it when they change a steady information piece,” one older participant told researchers. Stable layouts and large, well-spaced targets help everyone who is not a daily user.
Keep a way in that is not a screen
For anything essential, such as health, money or government, keep a phone number or a desk. A website should be the easy way, not the only way.
Works on prototypes as they are
This tool changes the pixels you see, so it works on anything in a browser: a live site, a Figma prototype link, a Penpot or Sketch prototype, a Storybook story or a generated app.
Open the prototype, click the bookmark, and click through it. The earlier you catch a problem, the cheaper it is to fix.
What people get wrong
- The 4.5 to 1 rule is arbitrary
- It is derived from typical vision at about age 80. It was always meant as a minimum.
- Older people don’t go online
- In the United States, nine in ten adults over 65 do, and most have a smartphone.
- It happens at forty, all at once
- Most people notice it between 40 and 45, and it keeps progressing until about 60. The light loss and contrast loss are gradual, decade by decade.
- Older users make mistakes because they don’t try
- They tend to blame themselves when a design fails them. The failure is usually the design’s.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page comes from one of these 12 sources. The small numbers in the text point here.
Reference
PresbyopiaNCBI Bookshelf
Peer-reviewed study
Global prevalence of presbyopia and vision impairment from uncorrected presbyopia·
Ophthalmology
Data
Blindness and vision impairmentFact sheet
Data
Ageing and healthFact sheet
Article
Ocular and refractive considerations for the aging eye·
Contact Lens Spectrum
Review
Aging and vision·
Vision Research
Reference
CataractsSurvey
Internet, broadband fact sheetStandard
Understanding WCAG 1.4.3: Contrast (Minimum)Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2
Peer-reviewed study
The effects of font type and size on the legibility and reading time of online text by older adults·
CHI 2001 extended abstracts
Guidance
Usability for senior citizens: improved, but still lacking·
Article
One in three (31%) over-60s say life is harder than five years ago because more services are now online·
Press release