Ask HN: My mother has shaky hands – guidance on iPhone accessibility settings?
As my mother ages (she's 89) her hands are getting quite shaky, and she's finding it more difficult to use her iPhone. I've been looking through the Touch settings in Settings > Accessibility, such as Touch Accommodations, but I'm a bit confused by the number of variables.
Her hands don't shake so much yet that she triggers Shake To Undo, it's more about things like the screen detecting the start of a swipe when she wants to do a long press. I also think Touch ID can be a bit confused by slightly shaky fingers.
I'd really value guidance from people who've gone through the same process, either with relatives or themselves, whether through age or conditions like Parkinsons, so I can at least have a starting point to work from.
She recently bought one of the new iPhone SEs, but I'm wondering if it wouldn't be better to get an XR with FaceID to avoid issues with TouchID.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 131 ms ] threadThen on iPad Mini, use max zoomed UI.
A significant degree of shakiness perceived by the device comes from tentative behaviors while she is trying not to miss small targets. With larger targets, she can point and touch with more confidence due to larger margin for error.
She primarily uses it when out and about, so carrying around an extra device for calls wouldn't really work.
In terms of zoom, do you mean Display & Brightness > View > Zoomed, because I have enabled that on her phone. Accessibility > Zoom I find pretty unintuitive, and I think her shakiness would make that a problem. I've also increased text size with Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Larger Text. I've done both of those things on my phone too, because I find it much easier to use despite not having any accessibility issues as such.
Out of interest, would the max-zoomed UI on the iPad Mini make any difference to gesture detection (e.g. detecting the start of a swipe rather than a tap)? Or is that more about muscle tension when trying to hold steady for a tap on a small area causing more shakes? Could you elaborate on that?
I'd suggest give Voice Control a try, it can do swipes, clicks, etc:
Intro video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqoXFCCTfm4
Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80AyUCjZYZM
That said, Voice Control is excellent for granular control of UI elements and for simulating and/or obviating swipe gestures. For example, "Go Home" replaces swiping up from bottom.
Voice Control also actively listens to everything as potential input. So, if an input field is active, merely speaking will trigger speech-to-text in that field. The accuracy is sometimes startling.
On the other hand, watching video with Voice Control active will result in Voice Control suggesting available commands (because Voice Control will interpret some of the audio as invalid [or sometimes valid!] commands).
I am not (yet) touch or motor impaired, but Voice Control is a godsend for hands-free manipulation of the UI. I hope your mum finds it similarly helpful.
I have family that has issues with grip and/or circulation --which causes other issues with capacitive touch. I found a stylus (and a nice collection of inexpensive ones too) goes a LONG way towards helping. In my non-medical opinion, I believe decades of muscle memory holding a pen/pencil helps the elderly navigate. Their hand also doesn't get in the way of their view either.
Voice control is a really amazing addition, but it may be overwhelming to recall some or most of the controls. So I would start small. I found a lot of success working with older adults and tech while just starting with small wins.
Also mind conditioning: start your day asking what the weather is like. That helps get them to feel less "funny" when using it. It becomes more casual and less embarrassing.
Learning to navigate takes a little practice, but is fairly intuitive once you know the available commands.
Unless she’s a very savvy 89 year old you’d probably need to set up the different workflows for her but IIRC it will suggest some of your most frequent actions when you launch the app. They also have a gallery of actions you can browse and might find something helpful.
Edit: It looks like they even have an “accessibility” section in the gallery.
One particularly troublesome problem with the Phone app is that touching just about anything accidentally initiates a call. That was hell for my mom and I'll bet your mom has it worse.
One thing I always wish the Phone app had was a "confirm" dialog when dialing a number (like what you get when you tap on a phone number external to the Phone app)
on a similar note, I know Tesla's UI is probably tested at a desk where everything is visible and stable, but in a moving car doing things like scrolling through a list of music and selecting is almost impossible.
I really like the idea of a "confirm" button for significant taps, such as a phone call, which could be enabled in Settings.
In 10 years of owning an iPhone I’ve initiated ~10 phone calls that I intended and probably ~30 other calls.
ios 7 was a real turn for the worse in that respect.
My Mom, who is 75, routinely uses Siri for all kinds of stuff. She's taken to it quite naturally and it seems to work extremely well for her. If you're using a voice interface, shaky hands become irrelevant!
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project-emm...
video of joystick mouse on ipad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvvG5_rLQRk
more https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210546
It does make me wonder whether a weighted touch "pen" might be useful though. One of the issues is that she has quite big fingers, so it's easy for her to obscure what she's trying to tap on, particularly the keyboard in portrait, and if it's weighted enough that might help to counter the shaking.
Of course it wouldn't solve the problem, as you still have the other hand that has to touch buttons. I ask because I recall seeing a "smart" spoon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiVQcgmIi08
I have an essential tremor (I'm 34, my mum has the same tremor, and I've had it since I was a child), and it was able to be stopped almost completely with Propranolol, a beta-blocker. I'm not a medical professional, so I'm not sure whether that's a good suggestion for your mother though, so seek professional assistance first.
(Related: At this moment, my wife is trying to video chat with a friend for the first time. Ho-ly crap is it a fail...)
It does feel like there's a niche for a super-simple smarphone OS, but it would take someone with very deep pockets to deliver that.
The solution is to stop using iPhones and use something that interfaces with her better.
Big physical buttons is a good start.
It's probably easier for her to interface with her bank through a desktop computer. Small buttons on handheld devices is not the UI for this job. "Shaky hands" plus "small touchscreen device" is enough context to reach this conclusion.
If you want to make a project out of it, you could set up a browser with a few extensions that limit her ability to expose herself to malware, etc. and make it easy to connect to the services she uses regularly.
Just because someone’s hands aren’t steady enough to use a smartphone like a young person doesn’t mean that they’re so frail that they have no interest in or need to independently navigate the world we’re making.
Source: 100 and Healthy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb--QxUnEv0&t=1338s The speaker is Dr. Oliverira.
Rosane Oliveira, DVM, PhD, is Founding Director of Integrative Medicine at the University of California Davis School of Medicine with over 20 years of experience as a molecular geneticist and has a special interest in nutritional genetics and genomics
This condition is called Essential Tremors, and it is one of the impacts of increased mTOR and IGF-1 levels that so many of us have from eating too much meat. According to Dr. Oliverirea, as an example, in her presentation she showed that eating 1.5 ounces of chicken per day, increases your chances of getting Essential Tremors by x21!! Wow. Eating meat and diary in excess has consequences and there's a lot of research to back that up.
Unfortunately, it maybe to late for your mother. But, this is for all the other mothers and fathers out there.