Ask HN: How to help elderly grandparent with technology?

1 points by ksj2114 5 years ago | 4 comments

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 5 years ago |

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.

ksj2114 5 years ago | |

This is good advice. I'm hesitant to switch to a tablet because he already knows how to use a laptop and has never used a tablet before.

I agree with you. Especially the focus on security / 2FA has made it very hard to monitor his accounts, which is good and bad I suppose. For example, I changed his gmail 2FA phone number to mine yesterday, and they changed it back today. That's already a huge task when helping him remotely.

Websites are also getting much more complex which makes everything worse. For example, the new gmail minimizes the navigation tab on the left unless you hover over it. That's awesome for me, but TERRIBLE for him.

newsbinator 5 years ago |

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.

ksj2114 5 years ago | |

This is genius. It's a little crazy that this is what it takes though??