Wheelchair? Hearing Aids? Yes. ‘Disabled’? No Way.

In her home in Ypsilanti, Michigan, Barbara Meade said, “There are walkers, wheelchairs, oxygen and cannulas everywhere. »

Barbara, 82, suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, so a portable oxygen tank goes with her everywhere. Spinal stenosis limits her mobility, requiring walkers and wheelchairs as well as considerable assistance from her husband, Dennis, who is her primary caregiver.

“I know I need hearing aids,” Barbara added. “My hearing is horrible.” She acquired a pair a few years ago but rarely uses them.

Dennis Meade, 86, is more mobile, despite arthritic pain in one knee, but he struggles with his own hearing problems. Equally dissatisfied with the hearing aids he once bought, he said, “I just got to the point where I said, ‘Speak louder.’

But if you ask one of them a question included in a recent University of Michigan survey: “Do you identify as having a disability?” — the Meades promptly respond: No, they don’t.

Disability “means you can’t do things,” Dennis said. “As long as you can work with it and it doesn’t affect your life too much, you don’t consider yourself disabled.”

Their daughter Michelle Meade, a rehabilitation psychologist and director of the university’s Center for Disability Health and Wellness, accompanies her parents to medical appointments and tends to roll her eyes at their reluctance to acknowledge needing support.

Working with other researchers on the recent national survey showed him how often older people feel they are not disabled despite ample evidence to the contrary.

The survey included nearly 3,000 Americans ages 50 and older and found that only a minority — less than 18 percent of participants over 65 — considered themselves to have a disability.

Yet their responses to six questions used by the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to track disability rates tell a different story.

The survey asks whether respondents have difficulty seeing or hearing, difficulty walking or climbing stairs, difficulty concentrating or remembering, difficulty dressing or bathing, difficulty working, or difficulty leaving the house.

In the university’s survey, about a third of people ages 65 to 74 reported difficulty with one or more of these functions. Among those over 75, this figure exceeded 44%.

Additionally, when respondents were asked about several additional health conditions that would require accommodations under the Americans With Disabilities Act, including breathing problems or speech impediments, the proportion climbed even more. Half of those aged 65 to 74 reported being disabled, as did around two-thirds of those aged over 75.

Yet only a small group – fewer than 1 in 5 older adults – have ever received an accommodation from their health care providers to which they are legally entitled under the ADA.

Even among the small minority identified as disabled, only a quarter had requested an accommodation (although a third received one whether they asked for it or not).

“It’s a familiar story,” said Megan Morris, a rehabilitation researcher at NYU Langone Health and director of the Disability Equity Collaborative. When it comes to how people describe themselves, “a lot of people still feel like ‘disability’ is a dirty word,” she said.

It’s almost an American value to refuse to ask for help, even when the law requires it to be available, Michelle Meade added. When faced with a disability, she says, “we are supposed to toughen up and fight to face it.”

This may be especially true among older Americans whose attitudes were formed before the landmark ADA became law in 1990, or even before the 50-year-old Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which guaranteed access to public education.

“It’s going to be difficult for this older generation,” Morris said. “Disability was something that was locked away. Younger people are more open to seeing disability as part of a community.”

In the University of Michigan survey, for example, among people over 65 with two or more disabilities, about half identified as disabled. In the younger cohort, aged 50 to 64, this figure was 68%.

Why is this important? “It helps a lot in health care settings if you disclose a disability and know how to ask for accommodations and supports,” said Anjali Forber-Pratt, research director at the American Association of Health and Disability.

Such accommodations “can make a stressful situation easier,” she added. They include mammography and X-ray machines that allow patients to remain seated, scales that wheelchair users can roll on, exam tables that raise and lower so patients don’t have to step on a footrest and swivel.

Health care providers may also offer amplification devices for people who are hearing impaired, as well as magnifying glasses and large print materials for those who are visually impaired. The buildings themselves must be accessible. Practices can send a member of staff in a wheelchair to help patients travel long distances.

Even with a handicapped parking placard, “you walk in, you wait for the elevator, you walk to the office,” said Emmie Poling, 75, a retired teacher in Menlo Park, California.

Due to arthritis and spinal stenosis, “I can’t walk upright for more than a few minutes” without pain, she said. “I basically live on Tylenol.” Yet when she makes an appointment and the scheduler asks if she will need help, Poling says no.

“My personal voice says, ‘Come on, you can do it,’” she said.

Identifying as a disabled person offers other benefits, advocates say. That can mean avoiding isolation and “being part of a community of people who are problem solvers, who find solutions and work in partnership to do things better,” Meade said.

Government programs and private organizations like the National Disability Rights Network, the Americans with Disabilities Act National Network, and the National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities help connect people to services and supports in their communities.

Several studies have also shown that patients who identify as disabled suffer less depression and anxiety, have higher self-esteem and a greater sense of “self-efficacy” than people with disabilities who do not.

For years, despite a lifetime of surgeries for congenital hip dislocations, as well as joint replacements and cancer treatments, Glenna Mills, an artist from Oakland, California, told herself that she was not disabled.

“I suffered a lot denying that I couldn’t walk very far,” she recalls. Although walking caused pain in her knees, hips and shoulders, “I didn’t want people to see me as someone who couldn’t keep up,” she added.

But about 10 years ago, “I stopped worrying about it,” Mills, 82, said. “I was more willing to say, ‘I can’t do this activity. I can’t walk that far.'” She bought a scooter that allowed her to walk with her husband and dog and visit museums. “I’m happier now,” she says.

More often than not, older Americans resist a label that could help them improve their care. Even those who request accommodations may find that enforcement of the ADA remains spotty, in part because patients do not always report violations.

The Meades, after years of advocacy from their children, made an appointment with an audiologist about new hearing aids.

But Poling intends to continue fighting without asking for or accepting help. “I know that time will come,” she said. “I’m going to try to surrender as gracefully as possible, given my personality.”

In the meantime, she says, “the mental image that seems acceptable to me is not wanting to look like a disabled person.”

The New Old Age is produced through a partnership with The New York Times.