I have an elderly family member with dementia who is jolted awake several times a day by spam calls and left disoriented or even at risk of a fall as a result. Telling them they don't need to answer is met with anger and annoyance (and it's not their fault). Most of the discussion here centers on seeing who's calling and making decisions based on that. There's a large group of victims that never understood those concepts, or are no longer capable of processing them functionally. The lack of tools to help us help them is very frustrating, and this is with a clamshell dumb phone, which these days is probably close to 100% elderly users with special needs.
I had my parents stay on a landline until very recently because services like nomorobo are free and trivial for me to set up and manage remotely as well as those landline phones have built-in block lists in a way that they already know how to use. Thankfully my mother has become tech savvy & is naturally suspicious and my dad doesn't answer any calls if there's not a contact for them as has been drilled into him.
I wish that Voip service for the elderly and disabled was free (there are some limited discount programs but it is not the same) and would be set up with nomorobo or a similar free for landline product. ISPs have erroded the home phone line to a sad shadow of what it was. e911 service is a critical thing to have for people who are older and/or have medical problems. Cell phone 911 service is not the same quality and will not have the same response times for most in the US especially in rural areas.
