BBB Cleveland: Age-Friendly Business Tips

BBB Serving Greater Cleveland and the Cleveland Department of Aging offer tips to help make your business more age-friendly and successful.

Keep aisles clean – refrain from overcrowding aisles, as this creates barriers. It is recommended to keep a three foot wide route throughout your business.
Place popular items, and products geared towards older customers, within easy reach for most.
Provide seating in a couple of locations inside your store.
Ensure signs are clear as to where the restroom is located.
Place ramps in areas with changes in floor heights to minimize falls and/ or tripping

Use Sans Serif Fonts like Arial or Calibri. Fonts with decorative end strokes like Times New Roman can be hard to read.
Leave space between lines of text.
Use vivid colors. Avoid pastels and grays.
Create a high contrast between text and background of your materials.
Whenever possible offer lists, menus, materials in larger fonts for people who may have visual impairments.
Positively portray older adults in photos. Refrain from using images that negatively stereotype older adults.

Train staff to communicate more effectively with diverse populations –including those with vision and hearing impairments.
Provide older adults with extra help as needed. Teach staff to offer a lending hand if someone has difficulty reaching an item, reading a label, or loading their vehicle
Ensure that staff is easy to identify, either by uniform or by identification
Discourage the use of cell phones by staff during customer interactions/ transactions.

Tips retrieved from The Cleveland Department of Aging. Learn more about the Cleveland Department of Aging.

Source: AARP, The New York Academy of Medicine (2014).