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The Harm in Conflating Aging With Accessibility

By Bran Knowles, Vicki L. Hanson, Yvonne Rogers, Anne Marie Piper, Jenny Waycott, Nigel Davies, Aloha Hufana Ambe, Robin N. Brewer, Debaleena Chattopadhyay, Marianne Dee, David Frohlich, Marisela Gutierrez-Lopez, Ben Jelen, Amanda Lazar, Radoslaw Nielek, Belén Barros Pena, Abi Roper, Mark Schlager, Britta Schulte, Irene Ye Yuan
Communications of the ACM, July 2021, Vol. 64 No. 7, Pages 66-71
10.1145/3431280
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older hands on a keyboard — Credit: MrMohock / Shutterstock

"The quest for youth—so futile. Age and wisdom have their graces too."— Jean Luc Picard

It is an increasingly global phenomenon that societies promote the notion of youth as the preferred state.^a In stark contrast to the "wise elder" of ages past, today old age is assumed to be marked by loss of physical and cognitive ability, diminished relevance, and as we are sadly seeing with the COVID-19 pandemic, devalued humanity.¹⁸ In many ways, it is not surprising that such stereotypes are reflected in our technologies: tech companies compete for territory in an already overcrowded youth market; whereas older adults,^b if considered users at all, are offered little more than fall alarms, activity monitors, and senior-friendly (often lower functionality) versions of existing tools. Meanwhile, there is a growing trend of workers aging out of the tech industry as early as their mid-40s,¹⁷ reflecting the higher value placed on the perspectives of those who represent the default target demographic.

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