My dad has 2 herniated disks in his upper back and he had to go to a cross bow. He got a 10 Point and it is an awesome cross bow. He got his with a crank. to cock it you just crank it back, anyone could do it. Compound cross bows are shorter than recurve cross bows and most of them are faster too.

As for accuracy, range and penetration the newer top of the line cross bows are better than compound bows. My dads 10 Point shoots a heavy Bolt with 100gr Montec broad heads and it is shooting 318 fps. Bear/Cabelas has a new cross bow that shoots 340 fps now. My dad put a Bushnell scope on his and at 30 yards with a rest you can put three bolts so close together they are hard to get out of the target. At 30 yards off hand you can still put three bolts in a 1.5" circle. At 40 yards it would be easy to kill a deer, its just like shooting a rifle. I’m not saying that anyone can pick up a cross bow and shoot out to 100 yards, I’m just saying that out to 40 it is very easy, after that the bolt weight takes over and it really starts to drop. That heavy bolt traveling at 318 fps+ will give you better penetration than most if not all compound bows.

Good luck
This is my experience with cross bows, my father would rather use a regular bow, however a cross bow is better than not going.