03.07.2020
Most people will have come across news stories about central government handing out tablets to socially isolated and digitally excluded people. Thanks to our funders we have been able to purchase tablets which we are loaning to our clients but quickly realised that just offering them is not enough. In fact that is the easy part. The challenge is to spend a good bit of time supporting the person to reduce their fears of using this technology, demonstrating the benefits of e.g. being able to connect with family and friends, and showing them how useful it can be for e.g. shopping and looking up things. Actually, the biggest challenge is taking the tablet out of its pristine wrapped box and wondering what to with it. Don’t worry. There are young people at hand to overcome all these issues. For example the young girl in this photo is the daughter of one of our staff who on seeing her dad trying to prepare the tablets for use told him, sympathetically, not to worry and that she would help. See the list of helpful actions and hints that she has written out when she prepared the tablets for use. I would never have thought of getting rid of e.g. notifications, turning off the auto-rotate function, increasing the font size, having clear wallpaper and getting rid of pointless apps. We are now planning to work with local schools to support more young people to work with older people living with dementia and indeed vice versa as we all know that inter-generational connectivity is good for everyone.
>>Tablet Accessibility Documentation- Rishaa Patel
