Why the article is helpful

• Insight regarding age-related impairments
• Improvements in products, tools, and environments can make life easier
• Emphasized the need to consider human factors and ergonomics for children, teenagers, and older persons

The author provided insight regarding age-related impairments, such as vision, hearing, and cognition in order to help designers understand how to better design for older users. Improvements in products, tools, and environments can make life easier and emphasized the need to consider human factors and ergonomics for those who are smaller or bigger, weaker, and less capable, such as children and teenagers as well as older persons.

Additional details

General Ergonomic goals when designing for the elderly:

• Simple to do
• Easy to see and hear
• No bending, stretching, or kneeling
• Simple maintenance and cleaning
• Enough floor space for unhindered ambulation, passage, and activities
• Nonslip floors, even when wet
• No-threshold entries into rooms, shower stalls, closets
• Handrails and grab bars, especially in the bathroom
• Toe and knee space for close access to washbasin, cabinet, work surface
• Point-of-use storage
• Effortless, consistent, commonsense, secure controls of doors, windows, cabinets, appliances
• Uniform, bright (but without glare) lightening of common spaces
• Suitable indoor climate, automatically preserved
• Complex issues solved and hidden within the technical system, so that its use is uncomplicated and intuitive
• Design for human dignity, safety, and comfort

Links to article

• Sage Journals