Found an interesting story! As for me I never thought of it. But I agree that this service will make the life of many people easier!
Jackson Hughes, a scientific software developer in Georgia, decided nearly 10 years ago it was time his grandparents learned to use e-mail to keep in touch with their 4 children and 11 grandchildren scattered about the country. It might have worked if computer screens weren’t so cluttered with tiny fonts and distracting pictures. And there were all those unfamiliar concepts: cursor, mouse, menu, icon, browser, folder, file, scroll, download, upload, right-click, double-click.
Mr. Hughes realized the e-mail project had reached a dead end when his grandfather, Paw Paw, turned his keyboard into a letter holder and designated the row between 1234 and QWER for bills.
Not one to shy away from obstacles, Mr. Hughes got together with his business partner, Ali Syed, to design an e-mail system that no senior could resist: no logins or links, no ad boxes or news flashes, no pokes or Twitters — only personal e-mail messages and photographs, with a caregiver making sure that everything is running smoothly.
The market is far from glutted with senior software, but an Internet search for “e-mail for seniors” or “elderly e-mail” leads to a variety of applications and a few devices designed to simplify and enhance the e-mail experience. People with arthritic fingers and failing eyesight can find voice-activated programs and supersize keypads; those who do not have access to computers can receive e-mail messages via devices hooked up to fax lines.
It didn’t get much better when Ms. Bryant tried giving her parents basic computer lessons over the phone. After many calls, her father reported that it took him three days to close a window and that he still didn’t know how to make an @ symbol appear on the screen.
Given her parents’ struggles, Ms. Bryant said, she was “ecstatic” when she stumbled on PawPawMail, which had been a topic in computer chat rooms. (It turns out that computer experts have as much trouble as the rest of us figuring out how to get elderly family members to use e-mail.) As soon as she set up the PawPawMail management system on her end, the window-closing and address-writing problems vanished on her parents’ end. All that was left for them to do was read and write their messages and look at the photographs people sent them.
E-mail can be a touchy subject not only for seniors who have never tried it, but also for those who are old hands. If some of my recent e-mail is any indication, there are many older people who can get rather testy when someone younger assumes they don’t use e-mail just because they are older. And when it comes to their contemporaries, older people who do use e-mail pity those who don’t.
