Teaching Beginner With Neuropathy To Use An iPhone
Hi everyone. This is my first post on this site. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Shawn. Anyway, a few days ago I had a person come to me to learn how to use the iPhone. As I've stated in my subject line, this person has neuropathy which means she has nerve damage in her hands. Also, I think we have a bit of a language barrier between us, because when I tried to explain to her what the flick and swipe gestures are, she still didn't understand me. So we tried using a Bluetooth keyboard instead, however I'm not familiar with the keyboard she uses. I think she called it something like Keys To Go. She told me that the keys on this keyboard are smooshed together, which sorta sounds the same as how people have told me the butterfly keyboards are on the new MacBook Models. So when I told her to use the left or right arrow keys to navigate, she told me that she doesn't know where these keys are on this keyboard. So my questions are as follows: 1, does anyone have experience with these keyboards and 2, are there better ways that I know of that I could explain to her about flicking and swiping? Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Comments
Why not try
Hi Shawn, silly question but why do you not physically show her. I.E hold her finger and move it whilst saying swipe or flick. Same with selecting double tap her finger whilst saying double tap etc.
last option to try
if all else fails, try the RIVO. this device is made for the blind with neuropathy. see if a rehabilitation agency would have one that you could test. They are expensive, but that may be all that would work.
Great suggestions, but...
These are all good suggestions, However we don’t live in the same place. She lives in Florida and I live in Canada. We are using Skype For the lessons. I don’t know what kind of support she gets, so I really can’t do much for her in terms of buying equipment for her.
Teaching Beginner With Neuropathy To Use An iPhone
Shawn I don't have experience with those types of keyboards personally on a day to day basis, however I would suggest that the arrow keys she needs to use are always going to be at the bottom right corner of the keyboard unless the keyboard has a built in number pad. Most keyboards I work with though do not have a number pad. In this instance it would be the bottom right hand corner would be the right arrow, immediately to the left would be the up and down arrow on top of one another and the third key to the left of that should be the left arrow. If I remember correctly the right and left arrow are full sized and the up and down arrow are half the size so they both fit together in the middle of the left and right arrow. I hope this helps. Perhaps she could also try finding a different keyboard that has larger arrow keys or a more standard layout where the arrow keys each are well defined and have space above both the left and right arrow keys.