If you have an elderly loved one that has a laptop but isn’t quite sure about the best way to go about using it, you can be of great help to them. However, you’ll have to use your knowledge of technology and your understanding of your loved one to bridge any gaps they might be experiencing. 

So to help you in doing this, whether your loved one is still living at home or is using their laptop at their assisted living facility, here are three ways to help your elderly loved one get the most out of their laptop. 

Use All Necessary Accessibility Features

One thing that might be stopping your elderly loved one from using their laptop to its full potential could be that they physically are having a hard time with it. To combat this, you’ll want to set up their laptop so that it’s using all of the necessary accessibility features that are available to it. 

On most laptops, you can turn on features like voice recognition, and talk-to-text features. You can also adjust the brightness of the screen so that text is easier to see, make the text larger so that it’s easier to read, and even install an external mouse or keyboard that can be easier for them to use. 

Teach Them Based On Their Needs

When you’re sitting down with your loved one trying to teach them about using their laptop, you’ll need to think about what their needs are and how you can best facilitate them. What they want to do with their laptop may be quite different from what you’d want to do. But by learning what they want to do with their laptop and teaching them how to execute on those actions, you’ll be giving them the best possible education for them personally and their exact laptop. 

Assist With Managing Passwords

One of the hardest parts for older people about using technology is keeping their accounts safe and private with their passwords. While it’s best to have a strong password that’s unique to each account you have and won’t be easy for other people to guess, remembering these passwords can be hard for anyone, including those entering their twilight years. 

To help with this, you may want to install a password manager onto your elderly loved one’s laptop. While you can have them write their passwords down on paper and refer back to them when needed, if someone were to gain access to these written passwords, they could have access to things that your loved one may not want them to. But by using a password manager, they can have more secure passwords that they won’t have to remember on their own. 

If you want to help your elderly loved one get the most out of their laptop use, consider using the tips mentioned above to help them with this.