A tablet for an elderly
by Olivier Cleynen
I would like to report on giving a tablet to an elderly person, sharing the (very positive) experience we are having with our wonderful 96 year-old grandmother. Maybe this can help other families with some technical decisions.
My grandmother migrated from a Windows laptop to an iPad five years ago. She never looked back. She is using the tablet at home, about four hours a day, every day. It’s a major part of her daily routine and it has greatly extended her quality of life.
The largest challenge to overcome was the dexterity required to touch the screen at exactly the right place, exactly long enough. She cannot type on a screen keyboard. We bought a Bluetooth keyboard that also serves as a hard case. The case protects the tablet for transport at home and when she visits family.
Despite my reticence to buy into the Apple ecosystem, I am happy with the decision to go for an iPad. I live 1300 km away from her, so most problems must be solved at a distance. The single home button makes for a simple go-to solution to most troubles she encounters when alone. And iOS works well: administrating it locally two times a year is enough.
Charging the iPad is a difficult operation for a very senior person. I bought a good USB charger and two short cables. Plugging in the lightning cable into the iPad is OK. Plugging in the micro-USB cable in the keyboard is very hard (colored tape on cable and keyboard helps with this).
The on/off and volume buttons are much too hard to be manipulated easily. I configured the iPad to never lock the screen and never ask for a PIN. Opening and closing the keyboard case simply turns the screen on or off. I deactivated most interface shortcut gestures (swipes) to prevent accidental triggering.
My grandmother uses the iPad for several things. The first use is playing games. Major successes are Bejeweled, Dots, Solebon Solitaire, and Duplikat (a Scrabble-like game that lets the users play duplicate, an important game mode in the French Scrabble community). Jigsaw Puzzle Bug, 2 for 2, Unblock Me, and Bunny Pop are also well enjoyed. None of those games requires speed, and few require dexterity (I would be grateful for more suggestions). We choose the apps together, and if she likes them, I pay to remove ads: even banner ads are incredibly difficult to deal with when your tapping is not precise and you can’t figure out what is happening. All apps must provide strong visual feedback, and loud audio feedback (but no background music). Holding the iPad in portrait mode is hard, so landscape mode games are preferred.
The second use is keeping in touch with distant family. For video calls, we use both Skype and FaceTime (which has much, much better interface). We sometimes write emails, although the interface is challenging and spam is a problem. She also receives WhatsApp photos.
The third use is watching videos. My grandmother watches TV series through iTunes (through the TV app), and recently also through Netflix. We choose series together and when she likes them, we order the full season (this is expensive). When watching series, she uses a pair of second-hand noise-canceling headphones I bought for her, for better hearing. She says that the experience is much better than watching TV.
Banking, making purchases, paying taxes, looking up Wikipedia, and other things, are done on the iPad with the help of family or assistants.
Problems encountered with time:
- Great-grandkids playing with the iPad. As a result, sound settings are changed, new games appear, existing game scores or levels are moved too far forward, and ringtones are changed. This is a complicated (social) problem to solve.
- The sound getting muted. This is a hard one because once the iPad is muted, the video calls do not ring anymore, although playing videos still produces sound. The top-right-corner swipe necessary to bring up the on-screen mute button is tricky to obtain.
- The ADSL connection going down. It’s a hard problem for her to report and for me to diagnose and fix remotely.
- Not enough space on iPad. The internet connection is not always good enough to stream movies, but there is not enough storage space on the iPad to download entire series seasons. Storage space management remains a pain point.
In retrospect, my largest regret is configuring the iPad position in the living room so that it is running on battery during the day, and charged at night. This brought an unnecessarily large number of cycles on the battery and we had to change the otherwise perfectly-good iPad after only 4 years. Instead, I should have bought an extra-long charging cable and arranged the living room and the habits accordingly. I resent Apple for the close-shut, un-upgradable design of the device.
Overall, this is a major success (and this, I must concede to Apple, too). My grandmother loves using the device. It is not as good as a working pair of legs, but it does two good things: provide active entertainment, and bring her closer to her remote family.