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Though not a nice subject for Elderly Help it is something we all have to face.
    Old age and death are natural phenomena. In accordance with the law of nature all conditioned things are impermanent and liable to change, being subject to causes and conditions. Everything that has a beginning must at last come to an end. The lives of all beings, after being born, must decay and die. Aging is just the decline of life and the decay of the faculties; and death is the passing-away, the termination of the time of life, the break-up of the aggregates and the casting off of the body.

    Although, by nature, aging and death are merely facts of life, psychologically they often mean to the worldlings a loss of hope, the frustration of all aspirations, a leap into a great darkness, and thus the feelings of fear and anguish.

    In spite of degeneration and loss inherent in aging and dying, old age can be turned into an opportunity for development, and death into that for a sublime attainment. At the least, one should live the good and worthwhile life of the old, and can then die unconfused or even die an enlightened death.

    A human’s life span is traditionally divided into three stages, the first, the middle and the last stage. Of course, with attention to what is good and right, one should live a good life through all the three stages of life. However if, through negligence, one fails to fulfill the good life in the first and middle stages of life, there is still room left for one to fulfill it in the last one, that is, in one’s old age.

    Not only when still a young black-haired man in the prime of youth, but also when he became old, the Buddha was still perfect in his lucid wisdom. This means a happy and fruitful life in old age is a possibility. Moreover, as mentioned earlier, one can even make progress in the good life and attain to perfection in this last stage of life.

    So many people spend the whole time of their early and middle years in search of fame and fortune, in seeking after wealth and power, and in pursuit of material pleasures. They might say that their lives have been worthwhile. Really, they are not. It is not enough. They have not got the best of their lives. They have not realized the full potential of being human. To live longer into old age gives them an advantage over other people as they are in a position to make advances towards fulfilling these potentials.

    What are these potentials? There are a lot of them. Examples are the various kinds of inner and independent happiness through inner development. In short, there are a lot of the good that people in search of wealth, power and pleasures will never experience and enjoy except that they survive to develop them in their old age.

    As long life up to an old age is an advantage if one learns how to utilize it, we should look after ourselves well so that we will have long lives. Of course, good care of life is needed. We should look after ourselves well, physically and behaviorally, emotionally and volitionally, and intellectually and intuitionally. The interdependence and interrelationship among these aspects of life should be rightly steered so that they become intercontributary.

    First, physical care should not be separated from behavioral development in relationship with the social and natural environment. In addition to sufficient nutritious food and physical exercise, right attitudes and behavior such as beneficial habits should be developed in connection with eating, general material consumption and recreations.

    As all know well, the present-day society functions as a system of competition and consumption where people fall into the state of time-scarcity because of competitive individualism and personal pursuit of material pleasures. In the context of such a society, people find it difficult to take care of other people and, therefore, people in old age should be more self-reliant. In these situations, they should devote themselves more to an  intimate relationship with the natural environment. They should enjoy physical movements and activities amidst nature.

    As far as personal relationships are concerned, love of sons and daughters leads to concerns about their weal and woe which are satisfied by parental care. However, when children have grown up and can take care of themselves, they take responsibility for themselves. At this point, the concerns of the old parents over their grown-up sons and daughters, or of the grandparents over their grand-children, often lead to vexation on the part of the latter and an upset on the part of the former. It is not good to the mental health of both sides.

    There is a principle in the Buddha’s teaching that when children grow up and are able to take responsibility for their own lives, parents are expected to develop equanimity. This means love must be balanced by equanimity. In other words, love that grows into attachment, whether to persons or things, must be replaced by equanimity. Love must be maintained at the level of loving-kindness or friendly love. In Thailand, aged people find the balance of loving-kindness with equanimity in joining their peers in the Buddhist observances at a village monastery and even stay there overnight every seven or eight days.

    To go further in emotional care and volitional encouragement, the elderly should develop in themselves the will to do something. This means that one should have something in mind that one values highly and has a loving interest in, which one wants very strongly to do, for example, the writing of some book on one’s cherished experiences, the carrying out of a gardening program, or the search for knowledge of a spiritual matter. Let one’s will to action be so strong as to make one say to oneself: “I cannot die if I have not completed this task.”

    Many of us can think of elderly people, especially those after retirement, who, not long after retiring from work, became subject to loneliness, dejected, down-hearted and gloomy. They quickly withered away and died. Some suffer from depression and even commit suicide. But the elderly who develop the will to action will not be so. Their willpower and strong spirit will only develop. They have something to commit themselves to and there, also, they will apply reasoning and intellectual investigation. They will become strong and healthy, both in mind and in body. The Buddha says that one who has the four qualities of the desire to act, strong willpower, the sense of commitment, and the spirit of investigation or experimentation, can live long throughout the whole life span.

    Now we come to the boundary between the heart and the head, where the emotion will be refined, made wholesome and strengthened by the intellectual faculty. However, in passing, I would like to mention another two points.

    Elderly people usually have bodies that are frail and easily afflicted with diseases. This tends to make them worried and dejected. Here they are encouraged by the Buddha to train themselves: “Although my body is ill, my mind shall not be ill,” or “Even though my body becomes frail, my mind shall not be weakened.”

    Another point is concerned with happiness. Many or most people think of happiness in terms of sensual or material pleasures. If happiness consists in satisfying the senses, life in old age will be a great torment, forever deprived of happiness, because aging means, among other things, the degeneration and decay of the sense-faculties.

    In reality, there are roughly two kinds of happiness. One is sensual happiness, dependent on external material pleasures. As this kind of happiness is dependent on material objects outside ourselves, those who are devoted to its enjoyment become pleasure-seekers or the seekers after happiness. In the pursuit of this kind of happiness, the pleasure-seekers learn and spend a lot of energy to develop the ability to look for and recognize the goods to gratify their senses. This has even been unconsciously taken by these people to be the meaning of education.

    But it is the gift of human beings that they are possessed of the potential for creativity. Through this potential, they have created, using their creative thinking and constructive ideas, the human world of inventions and technologies. Directed inside, this potential can be developed for the creation of inner happiness and the various kinds of skillful mental qualities.

    Unfortunately, the pleasure-seekers or happiness-pursuers, being engrossed in the search for external objects to gratify their senses, fail to develop this potential for the inner creativity. This creative or formative potential left undeveloped then works out for their inner lack of happiness and for various negative mental states. Thus in this way the pleasure-seekers, while seeking external happiness through the gratification of the senses with material objects, create or form inside themselves stress, anxiety, worry, depression, fear, insomnia and all kinds of negative mental states, and even clinical mental disorders.

    To be sure, these pleasure-seekers in their old age will suffer double anguish. Externally, because of the degeneration of their sense-faculties, they experience the frustration of the sensual happiness. Internally, they are subject to the formation and arising of unskillful feelings such as fear, anxiety, stress, and depression, and the frustration of the external happiness intensifies these negative emotions even more. This seems to be a very unhappy life in old age.

    Wise people not only develop the ability to seek for external objects to satisfy sensual desires, they develop the potential for creativity to create in themselves various positive mental qualities and inner happiness. We are usually advised by the Buddha to develop five skillful qualities as the constant factors of the mind, namely joy, delight, relaxing calm, happiness and concentration. These five qualities will keep away all negative emotions and unhappiness. It is the development of the ability to create happiness or to be happy. As this second kind of happiness is an internal mental quality independent of material objects outside, the person who has developed it becomes, in contrast to the pleasure-seeker, the possessor of happiness. In their old age, the elderly should learn to develop more and more inner happiness so that they will enjoy lives of peace, freedom and happiness.

    There is still a higher level of happiness. It is happiness beyond all formations. This is the highest kind of happiness, to be realized through the liberating wisdom or insight into the true nature of things.

    In the way of liberating the mind through wisdom and insight, we are advised by the Buddha to free and learn the truth of things at every step. Aging and death are among the facts of life that should be constantly reviewed. In the words of the Buddha:

    “These five facts of life should be again and again contemplated by everyone, whether female or male, whether layperson or monk:
        
    “I am subject to old age: I am not freed from it.
    “I am subject to disease: I am not freed from it.
    “I am subject to death: I am not freed from it.
    “There will be division and separation from all that is dear to me.
    “I am the owner of my actions: whatever I do, whether good or bad, I become heir to it.”

    Death, in particular, which is the central point or culmination of these facts, is a special focus of contemplation. Buddhists are advised to practice mindfulness or contemplation of death (maranasati). This mindfulness or contemplation is far different from imagination or fanciful thinking, which often leads to fear, sorrow and downheartedness. That is called unwise attention. The right and wise contemplation of death leads to the acceptance of the fact of the impermanence of  life, and further to leading a life of diligence or earnestness to get the best of life before it comes to an end.  Furthermore, it leads to the realization of the truth of the impermanence of all things. The insight into the true nature of all things will bring about wisdom that liberates the mind. The mind of the wise who realize the truth, being freed, is set to equilibrium and stands in equanimity. The person who is in this state of being is in the position to enjoy the highest happiness.

    Some of the disciples of the Buddha attained to enlightenment and final freedom even at the moment of death. For those who have not realized the final goal of perfect freedom, at the moment of death they are advised to die with a clear and peaceful mind, unconfused.

    In short, three points should be observed concerning the elderly and death. First, aging and death are plain facts of life, the contemplation of which may lead to insight into the truth of all things. Second, aging and death can be an opportunity for the development of a good life, we should make the best out of them. Third, relying on aging and death, even the ageless and the deathless can be attained to.

    With these remarks, I bring my talk to a close. Thank you. 
              |Ven. P. A. Payutto

 

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Usability for the Elderly

Summary:
The Internet enriches many Elderly lives, but most websites violate usability guidelines, making the sites difficult for seniors to use. Current websites are twice as hard to use for seniors than for non-seniors.

Seniors are one of the fastest growing demographics on the Web. The United States alone has an estimated 9 million Internet users over the age of 65 as of September 2004. Indeed, all industrialized countries have huge populations of senior citizens, many of whom have substantial assets. Although they are typically retired, seniors lead very active lives and often have great interest in modern technologies such as the Internet, which gives them another method to communicate and stay informed.

In our study, email was the main Internet application used by seniors. Our participants used the Web mainly for:

• Research
• News
• Tracking investments
• Researching medication and medical conditions
• And, to a lesser extent, to shop and bank online

Indeed, our study participants used the Web to read about and research a wide variety of hobbies and special interests, ranging from genealogy to cooking, war strategy, and musical instruments. Taken together, reading about such hobbies constituted a major use of the Web: The diversity of specialized sites is just as much a killer app for seniors as it is for other users.

Research with Seniors Using Websites

To learn how seniors use the Web, we conducted three series of usability tests:

• A measurement study, using three websites and a Web-wide task, with 20 seniors and a control group of 20 users between the ages of 21 and 55.
• A qualitative study with 20 U.S. seniors using 10 U.S. sites.
• A qualitative study with four seniors in Japan using four Japanese sites (to assess the international applicability of our findings).

We define “seniors” as people over the age of 65. Most of our test users were in their 70s, but we also included some people who were 80 years or older, and several people between 65 and 69.

Usability Metrics Twice as High for Non-Seniors

In the quantitative study, we asked users in both groups to perform the same four tasks:

• Fact-finding
• Buying an item
• Retrieving information
• Comparing and contrasting

The following table shows the measurements of four usability attributes averaged across the four tasks.

	Seniors (65+ Years)	Control Group (21-55)
Success Rate (task completed correctly)	52.9%	78.2%
Time on Task (min:sec)	12:33	7:14
Errors (erroneous actions per task)	4.6	0.6
Subjective Rating (scale: 1=low, 7=high)	3.7	4.6
Overall Usability (normalized geo. mean)	100%	222%

The differences between seniors and the control group are all highly significant.

Normalizing the usability metrics so that the seniors’ scores are the baseline value of 100% in all cases leads to an estimated overall usability of 222% for non-seniors. (Averaging computed as the geometric mean.) In other words, overall usability was slightly more than twice as good for non-seniors as it was for seniors.

Why Usability is Lower for Seniors

Websites tend to be produced by young designers, who often assume that all users have perfect vision and motor control, and know everything about the Web. These assumptions rarely hold, even when the users are not seniors. However, as indicated by our usability metrics, seniors are hurt more by usability problems than younger users. Among the obvious physical attributes often affected by the human aging process are eyesight, precision of movement, and memory.

Also, many seniors retired without having used computers and the Internet extensively during their working careers. Thus, they have not necessarily learned good conceptual models of how these technologies work, which makes it more difficult to understand their quirks. For example, we observed several users who did not differentiate clearly between a website’s search box and the browser’s URL box. After all, both are input fields that you type in when you want to go elsewhere. The lack of experience with good conceptual models is obviously not fundamental to human biology, and may disappear as the current workforce retires.

Our testing identified many instances of poor design that compounded to make the Web more than twice as hard for seniors to use. Complying with the guidelines for designing for seniors would remove many such usability problems. And, while Web usability might still be slightly better for younger users, the differences could be reduced drastically.

Readability and Clickability

The most widely known principle for supporting seniors’ computer use is to support larger font sizes than those younger users prefer. The principle may be well known, and it was indeed confirmed by our study, but still, it is frequently violated by sites that freeze text at a tiny font size.

Sites that target seniors should use at least 12-point type as the default. And all sites, whether or not they specifically target seniors, should let users increase text size as desired — especially if the site opts for a smaller default font size.

For hypertext links, large text is especially important for two main reasons: 1) to ensure readability of these essential design components, and 2) to make them more prominent targets for clicking. You should also avoid tightly clustered links that are not separated by white space. Doing so will decrease erroneous clicks and increase the speed at which users hit the correct link. This rule also applies to command buttons and other interaction objects, all of which need to be reasonably large to be easy to click.

Pull-down menus, hierarchically walking menus, and other moving interface elements cause problems for seniors who are not always steady with the mouse. Better to use static user interface widgets and designs that do not require pixel-perfect pointing.

Supportive and Forgiving Design

When websites violate the guideline to use different colors to clearly distinguish between visited and unvisited links, seniors easily lose track of where they have been. We’ve certainly seen the same problem among all age groups: It’s confusing when websites change the standard link colors, and it’s particularly confusing when the same color is used for all links, whether or not you have visited the destination page. However, seniors have a harder time remembering which parts of a website they have visited before, so they are more likely to waste time repeatedly returning to the same place.

Seniors also have a harder time using unforgiving search engines and forms. We saw users thwarted because they typed hyphens in their search queries, and punished because they used hyphens or parentheses in a telephone or credit card number.

Error messages were often hard to read, either because the wording was obscure or imprecise, or the message’s placement on the page was easily overlooked among a profusion of other design elements. Simplicity is even more important than usual when seniors encounter error handling: Your message should focus on the error, explain it clearly, and make it as easy as possible to fix. Also, as much as possible, website tasks should adapt to seniors and their preferred way of doing things. After decades of writing telephone numbers in a certain way, it’s not a very nice experience to come across a form that insists on a different format.

Usability Increases Satisfaction

Seniors strongly prefer those websites that are easiest for them to use. The correlation between the success score for our test tasks and users’ subsequent subjective rating of the sites was very strong: r = 0.78, which is higher than we have found in most other studies, though not as high as the 0.95 we found in our equivalent study of users with disabilities

.

Usability for seniors is important, and not just so that they can perform a task aimed at a one-time purchase. By focusing on improving usability for seniors, you can increase their satisfaction and the odds of forming a long-term relationship.

Intranets should also cater to seniors. Most companies have employees in their 60s, and many big companies have special extranets for retirees that provide online benefits information and help the company maintain contact with former employees.

Besides the business reasoning, we all have a very personal interest in increasing usability for seniors: It’s the one user category we’re all likely to join one day.

When it works for them, the Internet is already an enriching part of many seniors’ lives. Websites can become much more approachable, however, by following the simple design guidelines in our new report. If you consider these guidelines from the start, implementing them will rarely add to the cost of a Web design or intranet project. Also, many of the guidelines for increasing usability for Elderly Help other users as well.

 

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Government Help the Aged

Between 1995 and 2005, the average borrower’s outstanding debt trebled, but the 55-64 age range saw a sharper rise per individual than any other age range. So says ‘Debt and Older People’, a report by the Personal Finance Research Centre at Bristol University, commissioned by Help the Aged and Barclays.

As they prepare for retirement, people should be able to sit back and enjoy the fruits of their years of hard work, rather than struggling to manage their debts. It’s extremely worrying to see some people carrying debts with them into retirement - with some still paying off mortgages in their 80s, as the report reveals.

So many were disappointed by the scale of the government’s measures to help older people stay warm this winter. As the Help the Aged website reports, a poll carried out by ComRes reveals that:

· Eight out of ten MPs think increased investment is needed in the Government’s fuel poverty programmes, including Warm Front.

· Two in three MPs believe the winter fuel payment should be increased.

· Three in five MPs believe the extra tax revenue from rising energy prices should go to fuel poverty programmes.

It seems the recent increases in the cost of gas have simply pushed many older people’s budgets too far. Winter heating bills can take up a significant proportion of any monthly budget, but older people with fixed incomes - and no real potential of earning more - have been hit particularly hard.

It all underlines the importance of clearing debts before retirement. Once someone has retired, their income isn’t the only thing that shrinks. Their options for managing debt often shrink too, along with the amount of ’spare’ money they have once they’ve accounted for all their unavoidable expenses.

This doesn’t mean that debt solutions such as debt management and debt consolidation loans aren’t an option for older people, but - in general - the younger someone is, the easier it’ll be to manage their debts. After all, creditors are more likely to agree to a debt management plan involving reduced payments (rather than pushing for bankruptcy, for example) if they can see that the borrower can commit to making those reduced payments regularly until the debts are paid off.

But as long as the borrower acts in time, debt management can be a particularly effective way to pay off debts in time for retirement. A professional debt management organisation can help over-stretched borrowers do the maths - calculate how much they can really afford per month, and determine whether a debt management plan could help them clear their debts before they retire.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Melanie_Taylor http://EzineArticles.com/?Help-the-Aged—MPs-Support-More-Help-For-the-Elderly&id=1562685

 

 

• Honda helps the elderly walk like a robot [Digg] - It’s nice to see Japanese scientists developing technology that can actually help the elderly help themselves for a change, rather than creating more robots that ostensibly are designed to minister to their needs but may well have …

• aged and elderly depression - ron rougeaux has written articles which can be seen at his website at: elderly help information and resources concerning the elderly and aged on subjects of elderly care, abuse, retirement, medical needs, and much more…

 

Technorati Tags: aging, elderly, elderly help.senior citizens, frail

I am looking for good ideas about how to better help elderly parents open the front door. Regular keyed locks are often hard to manipulate. Any ideas about other access control solutions?

A big, plastic or rubber knob on the base of the key for easy gripping & more leverage. Color coding will make sure they know exactly which key goes in what lock.