Posted on 01/31/2005 3:00:44 PM PST by Radix
The vast baby boom generation is now well into its fifth decade; we're becoming the old coots we used to rail against. And according to the Media Audit, a Texas research firm, a quarter of all Internet users in the United States are 50 or older. Seniors are embracing the Internet faster than any other age group, and 36 percent of people between 65 and 74 are online.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
BTTT
More clearly marked keyboards.
Nope.
Not going there.
This is interesting, sort of, I had a letter published in the K.C. Star about 5 years ago on this subject. A columnist had made the comment that he had never used a computer and didn't think older people could learn. I pointed out that I had been on line since Compuserve used numbers instead of handles for id's and my sister then past 70 and I used e-mail often. Now she's past 80 and I had an e-mail from her last night.
Regarding the vision problem that he makes such a big deal of in the article, I had plastic lenses inserted in both eyes 5 years ago to correct cataracts. Expensive? yes at $10K but problems have been zero. Since I fly, I had both set for distance for good depth perception, so I use reading glasses. So what? been behind glass for 50+ years anyway.
As a 72 year old I found his article a bit condescending.
God,you'd think we were all demented cripples unable to learn anything new or use a keyboartd.
Yes,it takes me a bit longer to do some things but we old folks are persistant and will end up doing what we want to do.
Didn't Mr Bray ever hear of reading glasses?
In Firefox
View
Text Size
Increase
Repeat as needed.
For sticky keys in Win98
My Computer
Control Panel
Accessibility Options
Click the block for Select Sticky Keys
Click Apply
Click OK.
So why should we waste money on a new operating system which when released will be buggy and full of security holes?
In Mac OS X, go to the Universal Access panel under System Preferences. Click on different tabs reflecting disabilities in Seeing, Hearing, or ability to use the Keyboard or Mouse.
The zoom feature in the Seeing panel is cool. Once the zoom feature is on, just type Cmd-Option-= to blow up the screen around the cursor, and Cmd-Option-(minus-sign) to shrink it back down. This is useful even for people who see well, just to focus in quickly on some small feature on the screen.
How about a basic cell phone that's easy to use and cheap? I am certain that there is a big potential market among the elderly and semi-elderly for such a product.
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