On a sunny afternoon, you'll most likely find Amy Waterman in the backyard swimming laps in the pool. It's a hobby she's enjoyed her whole life and one that got a lot easier three years ago.

Waterman uses a wheelchair and needs help from her mom getting in and out of the water. Until three summers ago, it meant being hoisted by her mother into a chair that could be lowered into the pool.

These days, Amy wheels up to a machine that can pick her up, swing her over the edge and dip her gently into the water. She still needs a little help from her mom, but the whole thing takes less than five minutes.

"It has made a real difference," said Ethel Waterman, Amy's mother.

There's no end to the cool devices that can help people with physical disabilities get around. The company that makes Amy's poolside lift also makes machines that carry people through the house via harnesses suspended from the ceiling. And as more homes go up, builders are slowly starting to make room for them. They're even installing contraptions of their own.

Jeff Lavoie, owner of Always Accessible, the company that set up Waterman's poolside lift, said he's getting more and more requests to put elevators in private homes.

"In 1997, we installed one residential elevator,"he said. "In 1998, it was two or three. Last year we put in 50."

Not everyone has difficulty with stairs, he said. Often they're planning for the future.

"They say, 'I'm in my 40s or my 50s now, I know I'm going to be in the house for a while, it makes sense to have this for when I get older,'" he said.

And people are getting older. A lot of them.

With the baby boomer generation heading toward its golden years, the number of people with mobility issues is expected to increase dramatically. A study by the National Institute on Aging found that as life expectancy continues to rise, people will have, on average, 13 years during which they won't be fully mobile.

The answer to greater numbers of people with more limited motion isn't just elevators, which are pretty expensive to begin with. (They start at around $16,000.) These days, people can and are making all sorts of changes to houses to make t

hem more accessible.

Time for a change

The Watermans have had 21 years to adapt their Concord home. Over the years they've turned a ground floor office into a bedroom for Amy, turned a closet and pantry into a wheelchair-accessible bathroom, and added ramps wherever needed.

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