ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY AND HOME LIVING ELDERLY PEOPLE
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Date
2017-07
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AAU, Jorhat
Abstract
As a normal process aging affects the well-being of every person in some way. The social implication of this change in age structure will have serious implications and would be felt by various sections of society in different ways. Dependency, both physical and financial tends to grow with age.At the family level, a lot of other changes are also taking place which have a direct impact on the life of the elderly people. Assistive technology is used to support elderly people to get back into their normal life and enhance the independent living. Assistive technology “refers to a broad range of devices, services, strategies, and practices that are conceived and applied to ameliorate the problems faced by individuals who have functional disabilities” (Cook and Hussey, 2002). Assistive products are available for aiding the elderly to be independent in their daily living activities but people are not aware about the availability of such products in the market. Another issue for users may be poor design of the products. Products may be difficult to use as the targeted market was not addressed. Keeping it view in the present study on „Assistive technology and home-living elderly people‟ had been carried out in Nagaon District of Assam with the following objectives- 1. To assess the prevalence of physical frailty. 2. To study the possession and use of assistive devices by home living elderly. 3. To explore the design needs perceived by elderly people to be in the available assistive devices used for selected activity. The summary responses on physical frailty of studied respondents revealed that out of five indices, only in case of performance of basic ADL, the respondents were found self-sufficient. Low performance in IADL, high incidences of fear of falling, high prevalence of unintentional weight loss and presence of chronic diseases were observed; indicating frailty among the studied respondents. As regards to the use of assistive devices by the respondents, the present study found that only 10 per cent of the respondents were found using assistive devices while the remaining 90 per cent of the respondents do not use any assistive devices. Though the analyses of data had shown low functioning of IADLs among the respondents, especially in housekeeping activities, the use of assistive device was observed very low. The most commonly used assistive devices found was canes for mobility (7.5 per cent), followed by wheel chair (1.25 per cent) and hearing loop (1.25 per cent). In the process of generating design specifications on mostly used mobility assistive device, a cane, few suggestions were came into foreface. Based on design modifications as suggested by the studied respondents effort had been made to redesign the cane.