Why Grandma can't compute: Ageism in the computer industry

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Why Grandma can't compute: Ageism in the computer industry

Bill Machrone
Contributing Editor PC Magazine
Tuesday, March 20, 2001

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My apologies. I apologize for not having been more aware of the needs of seniors and for blithely assuming that anyone could use a PC these days, thinking that usability had actually gotten better.

In a previous column, I described my mother-in-law's travails with the PC we'd given her for Christmas and the way the scales fell from my eyes. I now understand that most of the computer industry and many users are guilty of subtle--and sometimes blatant--age discrimination. The letters convinced me.

SOME PEOPLE WHO WROTE were glad to find out they weren't the only ones who had difficulty introducing PC technology to an elderly loved one, and others were sympathetic to my mother-in-law's plight. Some folks excoriated me for not selecting the appropriate technology or for not providing the right kind of training, and others had concrete suggestions for greater success.

Let me try to summarize the most useful advice I received, so that all those who anticipate having to confront the "usability for seniors" issue can benefit.

Mac versus PC
First, and fully expected, were the alternative platform letters. "Buy an iMac," they wrote--and none too gently. A few writers suggested clearly that physical harm should come to me for having selected a Wintel machine.
Interestingly, several other writers indicated that they tried to set up MacIntoshes for their parents or grandparents yet experienced the exact same problems. One person said that getting through the Mac on-screen tutorial took his mother several evenings, because the idea of clicking on the Next Page arrow was beyond her experience.
Pick a smarter home page
A second group of letters indicated that I should have deleted everything but the AOL icon. But an equal number said that AOL was no better than anything else. Several agreed, however, that my choice of MSN was probably not the best because of its crowded, ugly home page.
Consider the equipment
One letter--from Grace Thomas, who says she's older than my mother-in-law--was unsparingly specific: "I could not believe you would set up that sweet old lady with such crap equipment and expect her to be able to run it. First off, the 14-inch monitor from your basement is unreal!--and only 64MB of memory? You cannot run even Windows 98 on that little amount of memory. At least give her 128MB. This is the 21st century. Shame on you!"
Many readers suggested that a trackball was much better than a mouse for old, arthritic hands, as the trackball separates pointing from clicking and largely eliminates problems such as accidentally selecting and dragging things.
Closing Windows
I've now learned (and readers have confirmed) that multitasking and multiple windows hold no charms for this audience; they want to do one thing at a time and want one easy way to do it. Flexibility is a confusing curse. Some people are trying to help. Community colleges, SeniorNet, and other organizations conduct training--much of it oriented toward and given by seniors.
Windows itself remains the greatest obstacle. Maximized windows can't be dragged accidentally, but so many other things can. The letters contained a litany of weird menus, oddball settings, threatening error messages, and changed parameters that stopped their users cold.

THE SOLUTIONS readers offered were often simple, and the situations would have been humorous if they hadn't been so frightening to senior users. This generation has great respect for expensive technological things, yet it generally doesn't understand that you can't "break" a computer by trying something new.

That said, Windows sorely needs a "software reset" that puts it and all of its applications back to a known, predetermined state without affecting data files. This would be the ultimate undo key and could save countless hours of rebuilding. But it would be vastly better if Windows didn't have such a vast profusion of utterly useless options. Perhaps some of the software that schools use to lock down configurations could be beneficial here.

Meanwhile, Grandma is making slow, steady progress with e-mail. We're going to get her a trackball, and she's contemplating a computer station instead of her old desk for better ergonomics and to accommodate a bigger screen. And I'm lying awake nights wondering what revolutionary new technology our kids will try to cram down our throats.

What else does the computer industry do that makes it tough for seniors to master technology? What changes could be made to improve matters? TalkBack to me.

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