Through my work with Dorot, I often help seniors with technology challenges. Some questions are fairly basic, like how to use email or browse a website, but others are not. As in most areas, older persons are very diverse, so I try not to come in with any preconceived ideas about how much they do or don’t know about computers.
Recently, a senior wanted to use a picture someone had emailed her to insert into her blog. There were a lot more steps to the process than I expected:
- saving the picture from email to her computer
- knowing where on the computer the picture was saved
- renaming the file name so it wouldn’t appear as only a number
- resizing the photo so it fit well on her blog
- uploading the photo to her blog
- aligning the photo so it wrapped around existing text
Many of us who have done this type of process for years may not realize how difficult it is for someone who hasn’t. In this case, we uploaded the photo onto her blog, but I reviewed the process multiple times to make sure she understood – and recommended that she take notes to reinforce what we had done.
It’s easy to assume that the problem is the older person, that they’re not tech savvy and have difficulty learning something new. But when I work with seniors, I reassure them that they’re not the problem! Technology can be challenging for people of any age, and it doesn’t help when the software we use has user interfaces that are not intuitive (this is why Apple insures there is consistency between many software products that run on its platform).
So don’t assume that seniors can’t learn. They are often eager to utilize the technology that many of us take for granted. They just need encouragement and support to get their questions answered.
