Alternative registration and authentication methods (for older people)

Question

I am developing a simple web application for some older family members, 1 of whom has Alzheimer's disease. The ultimate goal is to provide each of them with a tablet (possibly Android, but not related to this problem) that will be deleted to the perfect 1 bookmark on the main screen that will open my web application.

What I'm looking for is ideas on how to identify a user without the usual username and password methods. With their status, I know that remembering the username will be almost impossible, not to mention the password. Ideally, I would recognize the device and associate it with a specific user.

Other users will be available in the application who gain access to them by the usual methods (username + password on PC / mobile / tablet), with which I process Zend_Auth. These are only these 2 users whom I am worried about identification.

Security is not a big concern, because the data will not be sensitive in any way, but I still need to distinguish between users.

I create this in php with the Zend Framework. I'm really looking for more ideas than specific code, although anything based on php or javascript would be great. We will be very grateful for any ideas or suggestions. Thank you for your help.

Answer 1

These recommendations are only useful if security is not a problem:

• On the bookmarks page, insert the token into the link that you will use to authenticate users.
• if you can, check the background for the IP / user agent (if there is only one device that needs this simplified authentication process, and assuming the connection uses a fixed IP address)

And a simple idea if you have multiple users using the same device:

• On the bookmark page, put an image of each user.
• make it clickable, with the token described above in the href link.

It is easy to implement and easy to remember.

Hope this helps!