Make your ipad work for you and your Parkinson's
When Ray started working for a charity supporting families with disabled children, he had no idea how useful his knowledge would soon become.
Only a month into his retirement, Ray was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. “I’d always had problems with my shoulder, but the stiffness and rigidity were getting steadily worse,” he says. “I started to notice I was having problems walking, but I thought that was just flat feet.” Playing the guitar was getting more and more difficult too. “I realised that everything was happening on the left-hand side, which was sort of a giveaway, really. I had a good suspicion of what was happening before I saw the specialist.”
Helping others adapt their devices
Since diagnosis, Ray has thrown himself into his hobbies, although his music uses more synthesisers than guitars these days. “I don’t just work on my own songs, I’m producing songs for other people. It is very much an escape,” he says. “I released a song called 'Just You' for Parkinson’s Awareness Month and raised over £1,500.”
“I trained lots of people to make their devices accessible for them, and now, all of a sudden, I need these things myself.”
"Many people don’t realise how much they can customise their device to work better for them," Ray says. "But it’s worth looking through the Accessibility menu to see what tweaks might help with your specific symptoms."
For example, he says: “Assistive access was designed so parents or carers could let a child use the device without them having full access to every app, but it can be so useful for people with Parkinson’s too.”
When applied to an app like Camera, Music or Messages, it runs a simplified version with big, accessible buttons. These can be easier to tap if your hand is unsteady. You can also turn off notifications and lock the volume so there’s less chance you’ll press something by accident.
“We gave the families supported by the charity iPads and showed them how to adapt them to different needs,” Ray remembers. “If you’ve got problems with your limbs, touch or dexterity, there are many adaptations you can make. The same goes for hearing and vision.” These adaptations are built in – there’s no need to buy or download anything new.
Ray’s top tips
These tips are for Apple devices like the iPad and iPhone, but many other devices will have similar options.
Change what different taps or movements do
If your iPad does unexpected things like swapping between apps, you may be accidentally using movements or gestures which have actions assigned to them. Under "Multitasking and gestures" you can turn off any that aren’t helpful. One example might be "shake to undo last action" which can be a real problem if you have a tremor.
Listen instead of reading
There are lots of options under "Spoken content". You can tell the device to read out what is on the screen. This can either be a selection of text you choose, or everything on the screen. If you turn on "typing feedback", the device will read your typing aloud (one word or even one letter at a time) and offer suggestions. This can help you ensure your typing accurately reflects what you wanted to say.
If you use text-to-speech a lot, or don’t like the automatic voice, you can record your own voice for the device to use. "Personal voice" has a collection of 150 phrases for you to record. Once you’ve recorded them all, the device can read anything back in your own voice. “It might sound like a lot, but if you record a few each day when your voice is strong, you’ll get through them pretty quickly. And it’s a way of preserving your voice into the future,” says Ray.
Teach it how you tap
"Physical and motor" is the place to change what happens when you tap once or twice, or hold your finger on the screen. You can change the length of time you hold the screen before it registers as a tap. You can also tell it to ignore repeat taps within a certain period of time.
Turn down the blue light
If you find that using a device late in the evening disrupts your sleep, you can turn on "Night Shift" under "Sleep". That will automatically turn down the blue light a few hours before bedtime.