Setting up an iPad for a senior
Posted on 26 November, 2018
So first things first, let’s explain — whilst the title says ‘seniors’ this is really about setting up an iPad for one particular senior; my mother.
My mother is in her (early) 80s, could comfortably be described as a computing Luddite, and has very poor eyesight. She’s had a computer for several years (always a Mac laptop) but has never really been comfortable or confident with using one. When my father first bought her a computer, probably in 2012 or 2013, I expressed surprise that he hadn’t gone for an iPad instead — to which his reply was “They’re so expensive, might as well buy her a real computer instead”.
“iPad are so expensive, might as well buy a real computer instead.”
I’ve always felt that this missed the point of the iPad (and presumably an equivalent Android tablet), particularly for my mother; I believe that an iPad would provide pretty much all the functionality that she requires, but wrapped up in a more friendly, intuitive and obvious user experience.
Fast forward to late 2018, and I’ve just upgraded from an iPad Air 2 to a new 11” iPad Pro, having held onto the Air 2 for at least 3 years because the upgrade models — the Pro line — were so expensive, and the cheaper models weren’t an improvement over the Air 2. I was prepping to sell the Air 2, but a little disappointed by the prices on offer (presumably a factor of the new, cheaper iPads having depressed the second-hand market!) when a random conversation with my parents led to a suggestion that my mother should at least try out an iPad as a working device rather than her computer.
So the all-important question — what’s the best way to set up an iPad for her?
What tasks are we trying to carry out?
Part of the reason why I think an iPad is the ideal tool is the range of tasks that it needs to cover; this is pretty much ...
- web browsing & internet shopping
- reading news (websites or otherwise)
- reading books (mainly Kindle)
- sending email
I know — because I can remember the pain at the time — that my mother essentially learned to use email through a webmail interface, and literally remembered an order of items to click on rather than having any understanding of what the interface was doing. It’s possible — maybe even likely — that she’s improved at this over the last several years, but I still think that the touch interface on an iPad is a simpler, clearer UI for her to work with.
So what tools are we going to use to solve these problems?
Web Browsing — easy, let her use Safari for iOS; it’s not the best browser ever, but it’s the best that’s available for the iPad so a total no-brainier
Reading News — so personally I think it’s better to have an app for this rather than using Safari all the time. Certainly I think that the BBC News app is a must, together (probably) with whatever horrible paper she prefers to get her news from (I suspect the Daily Express is coming up here). Beyond that I don’t know what she reads, so possibly we’ll be looking at some Safari links saved as homepage links. If I think she can deal with the interface it might be worth trying to put Flipboard into the mix, adding the relevant feeds that she wants to look at.
BBC News app
Email — whilst I detest Apple Mail on MacOS, I’m not so fussy when it comes to iOS. I’ve been meaning to try Airmail on iPad for some time (the Mac version is my go-to for email) but frankly the iOS Mail app is ‘good enough’.
Reading — another no-brainer; I know that she reads on a Kindle, so we’ll be installing the Kindle app. Not sure whether she’ll want to use it or not (I struggle a little with the library interface on iPad, which somehow is worse than it is on a physical Kindle) but it’s free and easy to install it and give her the option.
Other uses
If we can get her used to the touch interface, it’s worth thinking about what other uses the iPad could be put to. It’s going to be a consumption device (I’m not knocking productivity on an iPad, but in this instance that’s how it’s going to be), and we’ve covered the basics of browsing and reading — but how about audio and video?
For audio I don’t know that we’re ever going to progress to Apple Music or podcasts, but I can certainly see radio — and specifically BBC iPlayer Radio — being on the cards. If video is an option then I’d imagine the plan would be BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub and All 4 — but I have to be honest and question how much utility she’s going to get from an iPad screen. That said, I guess that when you factor in the relative apparent size of an iPad being held up-close against a television on the other side of the room, so maybe I’ll be proven wrong on that one.
General settings
With my mother’s vision issues I can only imagine that we’ll be delving into the system settings to
ensure that it’s set for larger fonts, which are found in General > Accessibility > Larger Text —
I know she’s previously tried using an iPad Mini, and I can only imagine that the screen was way
too small for her to read comfortably even before her eyes started to really give her problems.
I’m thinking that we could also maybe use the high-contrast options in General > Accessibility > Increase Contrast; I’ve tried turning that setting on for my own iPad and not immediately noticed
any difference in the display, so hard to be sure whether it’ll have a positive effect for her or not.
Lastly there’s the zoom settings in General > Accessibility > Zoom. At the moment I’m not
planning on turning that on, mainly because I think there’s a very good chance of accidentally
multi-swiping and getting an unexpected result — pretty certain that, at least at first, being
absolutely certain how an interaction is affecting the UI is going to be more valuable than the
ability to zoom-in to read content.
