<p>I would like to see a line of electronic products marketed to us old folks who can no longer see the small print, especially in low light. I want a DVD player that has the Open, Play and Stop buttons in big bright words. I know my headset for the mp3 player has an L and R earphone, but I can’t see the little letters, especially at 6:45 in the morning when it isn’t even sunrise. And while I am ranting, why does it take 45 minutes and a call to our cable provider to get a new TV set-up through the cable box? There aren’t that many cables but there are all these buttons on 2 different remotes. Oh, I long for the old days, a B&W TV with three stations, and lots of good books.</p>
<p>And how about cell phones for our parents that have really good sound quality and do nothing except make phone calls (with speed dial). Got my parents the “jitterbug” type phone from AT&T. It has all kinds of junk–texting, web surfing–on it. AND my dad has a tremor. When he tries to push the speed dial button, his tremor resets speed dial. Argh.</p>
<p>And don’t get me started on digital cameras and the elderly…who just want to point and shoot and take a picture.</p>
<p>It’s not just technology. Some of the essential information on my health insurance card is printed in such small type that I can’t read it even with my glasses – and I’m only 54.</p>
<p>I’d like an iPod Touch with a ten-inch screen that I could leave in the living room. I could just zoom in to get to a readable font size. I know about the health insurance card thing - they increased the font last year to something that I could read with glasses. One of the really bad offenders is Microsoft License keys. They are 25 or 30 characters long and they are in tiny print. I usually take a picture with a digital camera and then view it on a 24 inch monitor.</p>
<p>What might make for a good device would be a flexible videocamera with zoom capability so you could just plug it into your USB port, the picture would show up on the monitor and you could zoom in on things with small print. Sort of like a virtual magnifying glass.</p>
<p>Here are some:
[url=<a href=“Technology for Seniors”>Technology for Seniors]Vision-Hearing:[/url</a>]
I really like the remote control. I’m sure there are other vendors of such products; I know I’ve seen the catalogs!</p>
<p>I received a mailing from my insurance company with health tips, and the font style they had chosen for the numbers made the 3 and 5 almost indistinguishable from each other. I sent an e-mail to the company and received follow up responses…we shall see what the next one looks like.</p>