Currently, there are approximately 53 million people in the United States that live with some type of disability. The most common disability, according to a recent study, is limited mobility. Due to this, approximately 6.8 million individuals are using an assistive device of some kind. Others, including adults that are planning to age-in-place, are modifying their homes accordingly.
Since an older adult receives emergency-room treatment for a fall every 11 seconds, the importance of having proper assistive devices and home modifications cannot be stressed enough. This is particularly the case because more than 50% of the falls experienced by older adults occur at home.
HomeAdvisor’sbathroom accessibility products such as grab bars is often at the top of the list. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, reported that 235,000 people sustain injuries in their bathrooms every year.
The above report also indicated that home service professionals have been hired to address a number of aging-in-place projects. Grab bars consisted of 71% of these job requests, and entryway wheelchair accessible ramps accounted for 54%. Vertical stair lifts for homes and other interior modifications are also beneficial to assist adults that choose to age-in-place.
When older adults use mobility devices such as scooters, many of these individuals also have scooter lifts for vans. In addition to scooter lifts for vans, they may also opt for other types of scooter lifts for vehicles and other assistive devices such as wheelchairs.
The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) and the National Conference of State Legislatures both report that most older adults want to live in their own homes for as long as possible. For individuals over 65, 90% indicated that this was the case for them. Since such a large percentage of senior citizens are planning to age in-place, there are a variety of resources available to assist them with doing so.
