Photo courtesy of Ontario Library Association

Recently I reviewed the Dakim Brain System for senior citizens; but what if you (or your loved ones) cannot afford the monthly costs or the high up-front cost? There are a few ways to make a regular PC seem friendlier, and I know from my experiences helping my grandmother that while they may be goofy, they do help, and that’s what matters.

First and foremost, the mouse needs to be dealt with; it’s a difficult concept to handle when you first learn about a computer, and if your hand-eye coordination is fading with age it gets even tougher. My poor grandma used to have a great deal of difficulty with the left and right mouse buttons; she didn’t understand that she clicked the wrong one sometimes, which led to some of the oddest computer problems my brother and I have ever seen. We used to joke that she could create a series of issues even Bill Gates couldn’t retrace! But we fixed all that with the lowest tech option possible: I taped the right mouse button down! If you choose to do this, remember that you need to unplug the mouse first, or Windows will think the right button is permanently clicked. If you plug the mouse in after the right button is out of commission, it won’t notice the difference. Grandma was able to click away happily, since the only button that “clicked” was the correct one. (Note: supposedly, a one-button apple mouse WILL work with a PC and you won’t need to defile good mice with electrical tape, but that’s an added cost to consider.)

The second reason why mice pose such a problem is the mousepad. It’s counter-intuitive to move the mouse around, adjust your hand, move the mouse again. I solved this for grandma by using a placemat; that way she wasn’t limited to the size of the mousepad, and could move the mouse around and coordinate it to where she wanted it on the monitor. It came down to her hand-eye coordination, but the difference was immediate as far as her ability to mouse around her games.

Finally, make sure to vet any programs before setting them up on someone’s computer. What might seem simple to you (launch program/find button in the middle of the screen/play game/hit esc to exit) can be two or three steps too many for someone who doesn’t fully understand computers. Generally anything that broke the basic style of Windows (as in, no close button in the right corner, etc) gave her trouble, so we did our best to run the programs on another PC to see what it was like before we installed it for Grandma.

Some of these are common sense, but hopefully they help to keep someone from reinventing the wheel. Have you had to work on making a computer more accessible? Anything in particular that you did to help? Share it below!