As a person firmly ensconced in middle age — 57 percent of the way through life, to be precise, if government actuarial tables hold — I have begun to notice certain things not working quite as well as they used to. Specifically, my eyes and my ears.

You can ask my family: My hearing is not what it once was, and not just because I have been known to hear selectively from time to time. As for my eyes, I had them zapped with lasers back in 2005, but the increasing squint as I read tells me the warranty may have expired on that. And I’m not alone — about 14 percent of Americans between 45 and 64 experience hearing loss in some way, while over 90 percent of those over 45 suffer from presbyopia, or the declining ability to focus on near objects. Globally, the World Health Organization projects that by 2050 nearly 2.5 billion people will have some form of hearing loss.

But I have good news for fellow aging people (which is, well, all of us eventually.) Our digital gadgets are increasingly being designed with features that can help users overcome both the usual sensory declines of age and more severe disabilities and diseases. From Apple AirPods that can act as inexpensive hearing aids — and now, on-the-go translators — to the growing ubiquity of

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