Study of Adaptive Clothing in Hong Kong: Demands, Analysis and Future Direction

Aging population is substantively increased over last decade and they have specific clothing needs especially for the elderly with disabilities. Their clothing needs to cover functional and aesthetic requirements in order to improve their quality of life. Adaptive clothing is specially designed for the elderly and the disabled. However, there is no public policy to support such the elderly with disabilities in their clothing needs. In this paper, we aim to study the adaptive clothing and its significance, the problems encountered by the elderly with disabilities in adaptive clothing, analysis of public policy in Hong Kong for the elderly with disabilities in adaptive clothing over last decade, and implications and future directions for adaptive clothing in Hong Kong. In our findings, the demand of adaptive clothing in Hong Kong was substantially increased over last decade and the predicted demand will be twice of current demand after 50 years. However, the Government policy in Hong Kong has not yet fully supported their clothing needs, and the non-profit clothing services centre is set up to provide tailoring services to meet their needs. As the capacity of the centre is very limited, it is necessary to expand its capacity through assistive technology and to encourage non-government organizations (NGOs) to establish more social enterprises with Government’s support. Such findings would be beneficial to the Government for strengthening such services for the elderly and the disabled as well as public awareness.