Tag Archives: Computer use

Baby Boomers Are The First Tech-Savvy Retirees

Posted on by under Gerontechnology

This article comes to us from Huffington Post. With increasing use of wearable technologies, robotic assistants, home automation, and a whole range of welfare technologies to support independent living, safety, and health, this generation of retirees are doing it differently than we have seen before!

Baby Boomers Are The First Tech-Savvy Retirees — And Have The Home Renovations To Prove It

08/11/2015 9:36 am EDT by  Sr. Editor | NowItCounts.com

Newest retirees want state-of-the-art technologies in homes and home offices for consulting work.

Time to throw out the notion of the “stuffy” grandparents houses like we used to visit in our childhoods. Continue reading →

Webpage design and aging

Posted on by under Gerontechnology

Since I started this blog, I have been frustrated with the small font. So, today, I have had enough! I decided to learn to code in order to increase the font size so that more people can read the site. The font is a little small for me, too, and I’m only 33 so I don’t think it’s due to age-related vision changes. Well, coding did not go so well and I didn’t want to pay to upgrade my site as I am not making money off of it or promoting a business. In the end, I decided to go with another design theme that already has larger font.

Great, so now I have larger font and hopefully everyone can read my posts, at least better than before. But, with the new theme, I have to manually change the colors of hyperlinks. This means, that if I don’t want to go and change the color of the text each time I put a link to another website or post (and I don’t), it’s a little tricker for people to know that it is even a link! I try to put some leading text, like “read more here,” but I must say I am frustrated that WordPress.com can’t accommodate readers of all ages and ability levels without the author paying for it (and I’m not even sure you can after you buy their premium package).

In further trying to make my site accessible for anyone who would want to visit, I used a few web sites that have some good information worth sharing with all of you. I had also made a blog post on Errorless Learning and design of technologies for aging adults. This was part of the work for the start-up I was involved in for the past year. That post doesn’t necessarily fit in with the Dementia Adventure theme, but I will likely be posting it here anyway, at least to get the information out to the public.

In the meantime, please take a look at the handful of websites I link below. I hope you get some inspiration for updating your website as well!

4 Easy Steps to Make Your Site More Usable to Older People

National Institute on Aging:  Making your website senior friendly 

Designing for Seniors 

Department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland:  Universal usability web design guidelines for the elderly (age 65 and older)

Designing for Senior Citizens

Wiser Usability

W3C Web Accessibility Initiative:

Web accessibility and older people:  meeting the needs of ageing web users

Developing websites for older people:  how web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 applies

 You can also find some great information on Slideshare.

website-design-for-senior-citizens-2-1024

Technology and Independence

Posted on by under Gerontechnology

Tech Advances Will Give Aging Baby Boomers More Independence

A notable trend is medication reminder functions increasingly found in mobile apps as a value-added feature that is free of charge. Medication reminders used to be marketed as a subscription service, but health-focused smartphone apps are integrating the reminder function with other health and wellness features, such as Personal Health Record, symptom checker and daily activity tracker.
By Harry Wang  You can read the original article here.
10/01/14 7:14 AM PT

The U.S. is facing a retirement wave. Seventy-six million Baby Boomers are beginning to hit the 65-year-old mark. By 2025, the number of people between 65 and 85 will account for 16.6 percent of the total population, compared with an estimated 12.5 percent in 2013, an increase of 18 million. In the U.S., the elderly prefer aging in their own home, but living at home has potential risks.

Connectivity and technology advances are enabling more sophisticated devices and tools — including personal emergency response systems, medication management, home safety and activity sensors, and GPS and location-assistance solutions — to help consumers and caretakers manage risks at home.
Continue reading →

Computer and Internet use in the US

Posted on by under Gerontechnology, Inspiration

This is a post from Telekin, a great company that started making computers specifically for older adults. If you want to find out more about them, their computers, and to purchase a Telekin, check out their website here.

Senior Computer and Internet Use

The Pew Research Center just released new data on internet and computer usage among older adults. In short, the numbers show that more seniors are adopting technologies, but still at a much slower pace than the rest of adult Americans.

The key overall statistic is that now 59% of Americans age 65 or older go online. In last year’s report that same number was 53%, which was the first time more than half of seniors went online. This increase in seniors logging on demonstrates the steady, if rather slow, trend for more and more older adults adopting new technologies. As I’ve written about before, the benefits of technology for seniors are numerous, so it is encouraging to see that more are actually capitalizing on those benefits.

Here are some of the other key findings:

Continue reading →