My 87-year-old father is snowbound. Arctic cold and a blizzard have forced people to cancel his favorite weekly meetings for several days in a row.

For most people this wouldn’t be a big deal. Our lives are full of activities: work or family commitments, social interactions, exercise, fun, volunteer work — all the things that keep us happy, stimulated and outwardly focused. If bored, we can go for a drive, head to the mall or take in a movie.

But these cancellations are a big disappointment for my father, now living by himself since my mother died six months ago. He no longer drives at night, and lives about twenty minutes away from the closest city. His beloved Boston is, for all practical purposes, out of reach: too long a drive, too much traffic congestion and too many bad drivers for an elderly man to cope with safely. He is housebound too much of the time, captive to weather or nighttime driving restrictions.

He now lives in a rural town, which constrains his options for striking up conversations with people at a nearby table in a restaurant or coffee shop.

When he was younger and had no driving restrictions, he had a regular spot at a local donut shop… While there, he’d bend the ear of anyone willing to listen.

His mother called him “a gabber,” someone who likes to talk a lot, someone who prizes conversation.

Macular degeneration prevents him from reading the Boston Globe or devouring library books the way he used to. He no longer hears well, so it’s hard for him to enjoy Netflix movies or broadcast TV, unless he remembers to turn on subtitles so he can read the dialogue.

He’s lonely, compared to his former life, but not truly alone.

Since his wife died, he sees friends only rarely; he hasn’t stepped into her former role as social planner. As his world becomes more narrow, he has fewer and fewer interactions with people his age. And yet he craves social contact.

He is blessed with many children and grandchildren, some of whom live within an hour’s drive or so. Nearby family members are generous with their time and attention to his well-being, but they are busy people. He sees one daughter almost daily, and has frequent in-person contact with other local family members.

Those of us who live thousands of miles away stay in touch by phone, email or Facebook, or the occasional Skype video chat. But not enough… For a loving parent, this is a poor substitute for being in the same place with people you care about.

Lonely, Coping with Silence

Compared to many elders, Dad is neither alone nor isolated, if you look at things from a factual or rational basis.

But his emotional truth says otherwise. Dad may go hours without hearing the sound of another human voice. My sister’s aging dog is his most frequent companion during the day. Silence makes him feel lonely.

This winter, his first as a widower, he is coping with “cabin fever.”

He lives alone, in a detached dwelling on my sister’s property out in the country. My parents moved there five years ago when they were no longer able to live independently in their own home. His living quarters are spacious, but he is a 20-minute drive on narrow country roads from the place where he spent the last half of his life.

During the day he is more likely to see deer or flocks of wild turkeys than other people.

There’s no one within walking distance to talk to, during the long hours when his daughter’s family members are at work or away at college.

He is starved for what he thinks of as intellectual conversation: the chance to talk about a movie, a newspaper article, last week’s sermon at church, an Obama speech, or something he is reading on his Kindle.

He finds few occasions to share his creative outputs (a new poem, a favorite photo or a special prayer, a childhood memory written down as a story). Conversation and laughter —heart-nourishing things that were easy when his wife was alive — are no longer simple, and rarely spontaneous.

Social Technology for Seniors

Unlike most senior citizens who came of age during World War II, Dad is pretty tech savvy. He started using a computer in his early sixties, and has twenty years of hands-on experience as a Mac user.

As a computer-savvy senior, he believed he could easily find a web-based solution for social interactions with other housebound seniors. So he spent yesterday online, looking for practical senior-friendly solutions.

His mission was to find an affordable online service that would enable his church group members to meet virtually on days when weather or medical appointment conflicts prevent face-to-face group meetings. He’d heard about WebEx, and had previously used Adobe Connect at his daughter’s expense. He uses Facebook to stay in touch with his extended family, so he understands what might be possible with an online platform.

Perhaps not surprisingly, he failed to find anything that he thought would meet the needs of his group of seniors…

Senior-friendly Needs

What was he looking for? [I’ve translated his requirements.]

• An online meeting environment that would allow multiple people to talk to each other, and comment on what they were seeing on-screen
• A meeting environment that would enable them to hear each other’s voice in real time, and support a natural conversation flow
• A means of transcribing or recording the conversation, for people who cannot attend the original online meeting
• A means of looking at, commenting on, collaborating on documents, such as a prayer my father had just written
• An online place to manage a stream of comments
• An easy way to find other like-minded people, interested in talking about similar subjects
• A way to manage group membership and privacy, so groups wouldn’t necessarily be open to all-comers (for example, restricted to members of the same church or senior center) — a place where they wouldn’t feel bullied by people who work at a faster or more aggressive pace
• Keen attention to accessibility, so seniors with hearing or vision challenges could adjust the on-screen audio or visual presentation
• Superlative usability for seniors who are far less comfortable with computers than my dad

Not surprisingly, his search was pretty fruitless.

Pricing Models Don’t Fit Senior Budgets

Software that might offer usability models that wouldn’t intimidate senior citizens is generally priced for enterprise budgets — way out of reach for seniors living on retirement savings or paltry pensions.

Have you ever seen online pricing with special options for senior citizens or nonprofits?

The free stuff tended to underwhelm him, due to complexities or usability gaps. His take was that set-up and support would require on-going help by a tech-savvy younger person who knows how to talk to elders without being arrogant or condescending. Dad lacked confidence that his group could find volunteers willing to help a bunch of oldsters like them.

As for the monthly fees, he had a hard time believing his church would be open to even thinking about sponsoring online meetings, for fear it would further deplete attendance by aging congregations on Sunday mornings. (We chatted a bit about disruptive innovations, and the fears of powerful incumbents… But that’s another story.)

Our Under-served Elders

The irony is, seniors who feel lonely, isolated, lack stimulation or intellectual challenge are easily prone to depression or illness. They become vulnerable when they lose their sense of well-being or feel they can no longer contribute in meaningful ways to a community.

So they’ll go on yet another set of meds, or decline to the point where they need medical intervention — which will cost taxpayers even more money to subsidize Medicare and Medicaid.

These are our parents and grandparents. Surely they deserve better.

One day we’ll be in their shoes too…