HACKER Q&A
📣 ksj2114

How to help elderly grandparent with technology?


My grandfather sadly has dementia, and is finding it harder and harder to use his computer. He has a Macbook Air and mostly uses 5 websites (gmail / Google, Netflix, Amazon, Times of India, and CNN).

I'm concerned about the following: + People send him email spam, or even corporate emails, and he can't tell the difference between a real email and a phishing email / corporate marketing email + He'll make small changes, such as accidentally logging out of Netflix or removing a bookmark, and then get stuck trying to get back to the site + I haven't have a good way to remotely connect to his computer to help him out that. Even with common remote access apps they require him to click on a few buttons, which takes 20 minutes to figure out

Any suggestions?

  👤 n_t Accepted Answer ✓
1. If those 6-10 websites is all he uses, may be switch to some tablet and create shortcuts for those. If you are up to it, jailbreak the tablet and change the UI completely which has customized fonts, icons/shortcuts.

2. For email, use Gmail as it seems to be the current best w.r.t. filtering. You should keep access to this account as well and check yourself from time to time. May be increase spam setting to max, to lean on false positive side.

I feel that this whole technical revolution of last 2 decades has really left out all elderly, not just people with medical conditions. What is needed, may be, is a generic interfacing layer which can map any app's UI to simpler interface and yet maintain core functionality of the app. I dont know if there is any, or if it's even feasible.

👤 newsbinator
My support life and my mom's tech life became much easier and more pleasant when I switched her to iPad.

She has 2 iPads and a glass side-table:

When she needs help with an iPad, she puts it down under the glass table, puts the other iPad on top of the glass table, and calls me on FaceTime video from the top one, to show me the bottom iPad.

I tell her what to press on the bottom iPad, and we're done in seconds.