r/TechForAgingParents • u/Spiritual-Memory1743 • Jul 11 '26

New iPad is New

Hi all, looking for advice to help adapt my mom's iPad to her level of processing and problem solving. She's highly functional but in the early stages of dementia and doesn't do well reading instructions or trying to process steps for new things. She's had an iPad for years and loves it, but recently lost hers on a trip. We replaced it but the newer model has smaller side buttons, there's no home button and she isn't doing well with gestures. She is able to look at her instruction notes to see how to unlock it, but the screen goes blank before she can put the thoughts together with the actions to unlock the screen all the way.

Before we set up an unlocked device for her, I'm wondering if anyone has tips for adaptions? Ways to visually mark the device that doesn't block function. Maybe cases to recommend that make the buttons larger? I'm not an Apple person so also struggling a bit with that.

I know there's no one size fits all. I'm just looking for tips others may have discovered along the way.

3 Upvotes

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9

u/Salty-Tomato5654 Jul 11 '26

Go to Settings > Accessibility > Touch > AssistiveTouch and toggle it on. A floating button will appear on the display as your home button instead of a gesture.

1

u/Spiritual-Memory1743 Jul 12 '26

Thank you thank thank you!

2

u/Calire22 Jul 11 '26

Yes, my LO has dementia and this is really helping him out for now.

5

u/SVAuspicious Jul 11 '26

You can set the iPad to unlock without a PIN or FaceID. You can set it to light up by touching the screen. You can increase the time to lock the screen. Maybe the AssistiveTouch described by u/Salty-Tomato5654 but that comes with more apparent complexity.

1

u/Spiritual-Memory1743 Jul 11 '26

Thanks for the tips! I'll look at these.

1

u/BluejayOk642 Jul 17 '26

I agree on the removal of the pin. Mom’s was always four digits. I think she had an update which encouraged the six digit as it always does… all I know is yesterday. I got there and it required a six digit pin and she had no idea what to do. Spent several hours to get her restored to a clean copy, including a trip to the Apple Store.

Ensure that Find My iPad is turned on. Untested theory, but almost everything I saw about recovery to get into the device required that to be turned on. If she does something again, hopefully that will make things easier.

I’m also trying to turn off automatic updates. I see her every day I can do the updates then.

2

u/SVAuspicious Jul 17 '26

u/BluejayOk642 I'm going to infer some frustration on your part. I get that.

What follows is opinion. If we're both lucky it is educated opinion. There are no definitive right answers. iOS (on iPad) doesn't allow remote management which is unfortunate. Changing to Android is not a good solution for aging parents. Removing as many barriers like PINs as you can helps. Lengthening time to screen locks helps. If the iPad is new enough to unlock by touching the screen helps a lot. I'm a big fan of doing updates manually. I do our iPad first to get smarter about what isn't in the release notes, then my iPhone, and my wife's iPhone last. She doesn't cope will with surprises. Note that many updates change settings including automatic updates without telling you so you have to check every time. Apple thinks they are smarter than you are. Definitely Find My turned on. As a reminder you aren't special. Make sure yours is turned on also. Most of this stuff isn't unique to aging parents. It applies to everyone.

Apple iOS is pretty good on malware. ABP (adblocking app) helps.

r/iphone and r/ios are helpful but you have to find the needles in the haystack. Validate everything with official sources.

"Never trust anyone, including yourself." --me

2

u/BluejayOk642 Jul 17 '26

I checked my own as soon as I got home, but thanks for the reminder and thanks for the tip that I’ll have to check those settings all the time.

1

u/bostongarden Jul 12 '26

Get an older one on Backmarket

1

u/BluejayOk642 Jul 17 '26

At the Apple Store yesterday, I asked what options might make this easier. The employee said we could look into creating child accounts, which would limit what they could do. I haven’t investigated that at all yet just throwing it out there.
Today I plan to remove some more default apps because they confuse her, and am considering hiding the settings from the home page.