Older People and Mobility in the Home: in Search of Useful Assistive Technologies

Abstract

A number of assistive technologies exist to help older people with their indoor mobility needs and there is an increasing recognition that older people are capable of being critical and active consumers of these technologies. This paper reports on a study that used focus groups and informal trials to explore older people's perspectives on their indoor mobility problems, their ideas on what assistive technologies might resolve these problems and their evaluation of assistive technologies that were developed in response to these ideas. The analysis of the results from the four focus groups led to the development of a stair-climbing aid and a new cataloguing aid. The analysis of the results from the informal trials produced useful feedback on the design of the two products and indicated some limitations to the focus group methodology which could be addressed in future research.