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   It soon became clear that the cordless phone system I had installed in my parents home to help prevent falls and assist them in getting help in an emergency was not working out. They couldn’t see the buttons. They couldn’t hear on the "voice enhanced" hand set. It was too complex, and many of the features could not be used in their rural area anyway.

I searched for a replacement phone system that had the same look and feel as the old phones, and had volume control in the hand set for the hard of hearing. I found the perfect solution. It had huge buttons that could even talk if someone had sight problems.  It had the personalized phone book that would speak the name of the caller. It had a very sensitive speaker phone that could pick up voices from as far away as 15 feet.

To make matters even better, it had a remote control pendant that would allow answering from a remote position. The pendant could even be used as an emergency call device. If the button on the pendant is held down for three seconds, the phone automatically dials pre-programmed emergency numbers and plays a pre-recorded emergency notification message.

http://www.seniorssuperstores.com/cart/html/Products/PHONES--PAGERS/Telemergency-ClearV-598.html

I purchased the phone and installed it for them. Mom loves it!! She mostly uses the speaker phone because it’s easier for her, and she and dad can both participate in the conversation. She is still reluctant to try any of the other features, and asked me not to program any emergency notification numbers into it until she was sure she understood it.

She was afraid a curious great grand child might push the emergency call button and she would have a lot of explaining to do. She’s probably right. She usually is. Anyway, since they can depend on each other, they don’t face the challenges of an elderly person living alone.

The only issue we have now is that I had to remove the cordless system because they had read that no more than three phones should be connected on a single line, and they had to keep their old phones for connection to medical monitoring devices. 

Now, mom misses the answer machine that she had on the cordless system, and the freedom of walking around with a phone in her hand. She used more of the new fangled features than she thought. Dad still bypasses the new phone with a voice amplifier handset especially for him, and uses the same old phone he has had for twenty years.  I understand his choice. I still use a clock radio that I purchased during the vietnam war.