Older adults, caregivers, and people working inside the care ecosystem are navigating cognitive load, emotional stress, time scarcity, and fragmented systems—often all at once. When technology ignores those realities, it doesn’t just fail to help; it actively makes life harder.
This resource library exists to ground AgeTech work in reality rather than assumptions.
The articles and reports collected here reflect what research, policy, and usability experts consistently show: aging is predictable, caregiving is widespread and unpaid, and usability and accessibility are not edge cases. They are core requirements.
These sources are meant to help designers, product teams, founders, and decision-makers understand the real constraints people live within—and to design technology that fits into those lives, rather than demanding that people adapt to poorly designed tools.
The AgeTech Resource Library
Aging, Demographics & Systems (Macro Context)
WHO – Ageing & Health
Global populations are aging rapidly, and health, care, and technology systems must shift from disease-centric models to ones that preserve functional ability and independence.
WHO – Ageing & Health Publications
Evidence shows that fragmented care systems disproportionately fail older adults, reinforcing the need for integrated, human-centered service design.
WHO – Assistive Technology Fact Sheeteets/detail/assistive-technology
Over 2.5 billion people need assistive technology, yet access gaps persist—often due to poor design, cost, and usability rather than lack of innovation.
WHO – Global Initiative on Assistive Technology (GATE)
Assistive technology must be affordable, adaptable, and usable across diverse cognitive and physical abilities—not just clinically effective.
WHO – Ageing Data Portal
Aging is a predictable demographic shift, making reactive, short-term tech solutions fundamentally inadequate.
Technology Adoption & Confidence (User Reality)
Pew Research – Older Adults & Technology
Older adults adopt technology unevenly, with confidence and perceived usefulness—not ability—being the biggest barriers.
Caregivers & the Care Ecosystem
AARP – Aging Technology (AgeTech Overview) (AARP Public Policy Institute)
Technology can support aging in place, but only when it reduces friction rather than adding new tasks for older adults or caregivers.
AARP – Research Insights on Caregiving
Most caregiving is unpaid, untrained, and emotionally taxing—any “caregiver tech” that assumes surplus time or energy is misaligned.
AARP + National Alliance for Caregiving – Caregiving in the U.S. (2025)
Tens of millions of caregivers juggle care with jobs and families, making simplicity, reliability, and trust non-negotiable in design.
AARP – Caregivers’ Use of Technology
Caregivers already use technology extensively but abandon tools that are hard to learn, poorly integrated, or emotionally tone-deaf.
Accessibility, Cognition & Usability
W3C WAI – Cognitive Accessibility Overview
Cognitive accessibility failures—confusing language, inconsistent navigation, error-heavy flows—exclude users long before physical limitations do.
W3C WAI – Accessibility Fundamentals
Accessibility is not a compliance exercise; it is a usability baseline that disproportionately benefits older adults and caregivers.
W3C WAI – Design & Develop Guidance
Designing for older users means prioritizing clarity, predictability, and forgiveness—not “advanced” features.
W3C WAI – WCAG Supplemental Guidance
Supplemental WCAG guidance provides practical design patterns that address real-world cognitive and usability breakdowns.
Research & Evidence
JMIR Aging – Technology Use Among Older Adults and Caregivers (Journal of Medical Internet Research)
Older adults and caregivers value technology most when it supports autonomy and reduces stress—not when it simply adds data.
Frontiers in Public Health – Technology Use by Unpaid Caregivers
Caregivers disengage from tools that ignore emotional labor, workflow disruption, and trust concerns.
Elderly-centered usability heuristics for augmented reality design and development – Nishchyk et al
Age-specific usability heuristics reveal that augmented reality design must prioritize perceptual simplicity, context awareness, and error tolerance to be effective for older users.
Field Context
Gerontechnology (Overview on Wikipedia)
AgeTech sits at the intersection of aging, design, and technology—and fails when any one of those is treated as secondary.
Assistive Technology (Overview on Wikipedia)
Assistive tech succeeds when it is invisible, adaptable, and respectful—not when it calls attention to decline.