Gordon's Tech

(You can skip the rant to get to the tech details) <rant>I frequently berate Apple for the radioactive-feces-infested-dumpster-fire t...

My father has been doing well in a Quebec long term care facility for veterans (in Canada that has historically meant WW II, he’s in his 90s...

There are lots of pages that describe using Apple's Assistive Touch  to work around the iPhone's  defective-by-design home button  ...

My mother first started using a Mac about six years ago, and an iPad 3 years ago. I wrote posts on how I configured both (I need to update s...

I bought my 83 yo mother the unlocked GSM  Snapfon ezONE-C Senior Cell Phone with Big Buttons  for about $80 (it's $60 now) along with i...

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was testing a Facetime videolink to my mother . It's not my first attempt. I'd tried Google Video...

This post updates a prior article:  Grandma's iPad - A user guide and review . My son and I just spent a few days with my elderly paren...

FaceTime for Mac ($1) has an undocumented AutoAnswer feature ... 10.6: Enable AutoAnswer in FaceTime for the Mac - Mac OS X Hints ... defau...

My iPhone was silent in VoiceOver mode. I couldn't figure out the problem. The UI behaved as expected, and I could record and play back ...

I gave my 80 yo half-blind wheelchair bound arthritic mother her iPad . She loves it. She's fascinated by it, her main complaint is that...

I'm getting to the end of configuring Grandma's iPad, but I'll call out one finding early. For someone with low vision, Safari...

I've been puzzled that my mother's iPad accessibility seemed undocumented. Turns out it's all in the PDF iPad User Guide (manu...

I'm probably the only iPad owner who didn't know iBooks isn't pre-installed. It showed up when I visited the App Store from the ...

My 80 yo mother's macular degeneration is limiting her ability to read printed books. I took her to an Apple store this past weekend to ...

We have a 21" CRT. We known nothing about television. On the other hand, my mother likes television and she has lost much of her vision...

Continuing in the theme of OS X accessibility (see also VisiKey and magnify toolbars ), I've several additional recommended modificatio...

(See accessibility posts for prior tips.) I've upgraded my mother's Mini from 10.4 to 10.5.7 and installed a VisiKey keyboard. ...

This is a bit complex to describe fully, but I hope these hints will be of use. Briefly, I wanted to be able to establish a video chat con...

Front Row is designed for remote control at a distance. So the UI is pretty good for someone with poor vision, and it's much simpler tha...

I was looking for something that would give my mother a few more months of computer use. The OS X grayscale accessibility option looked int...