On the Possibilities of "Ageing Successfully" with Extensive Physical Impairments
In: Développement humain, handicap et changement social: Human development, disability, and social change, Band 19, Heft 2, S. 127-140
ISSN: 2562-6574
Based on qualitative interviews with Swedish women and men between the ages 65-72 who have been
living with physical impairments for a long period of time, this article considers the opportunities and challenges
of adopting a leisurely active and self-fulfilling lifestyle in later life if one uses a wheelchair and/or is
relatively dependent upon other people's support. The participants' accounts point to the importance of
considering how social and environmental contexts may influence the meanings and consequences of
chronic illnesses and impairments for people of all ages. General developments in welfare, technical improvements,
as well as a long line of reforms that include legislation on the adaptation of homes and the
Act concerning Support and Service for Persons with Certain Functional Impairments (Lag om stöd och
service till vissa funktionshindrade, LSS) are commented upon as changes that have contributed to the
leisurely active lifestyle of the interviewees Because it focuses on today's "young old disabled people" –
women and men who have grown up and are growing old during an era of technological advances and
developments in the area of disability policies – the article gives voice to a group of people who have been
largely overlooked in gerontology and in the literature on the modern, active, "successfully ageing" senior
citizen. In research on disability and in disability policy there are, similarly, few references to disabled seniors.