Basic tablet for seniors to keep connected
Two Matamata women have launched a simplified tablet for seniors that requires no typing or wifi to keep elderly relatives ‘‘in the loop’’ each day.
Julie Caldwell and her colleague Julie Blackwell, accountants, have devised the tablet after Caldwell’s mother Lois found that as she approached her 90s she was no longer able to keep up with all the changes in her iPad and phone which she had been using for years.
There was nothing on the market that offered the simplicity they were looking for, so they decided to develop their own, researching and using experts, and so began a project that has now produced Kitcal, a personalised tablet built specifically for seniors.
Sadly, Lois passed away in June this year, before the tablet’s development was completed.
‘‘So, some days I sit here thinking life’s a bit of a bummer really, and other times I think it’s not just her, it’s everybody like her, and there’s lots of them, and it’s OK. She knew it was coming, and she loved it and it’s just one of those cruel ironies of life that happen to everybody,’’ Caldwell said.
What she and Blackwell wanted to develop was a tablet stripped back to its basics with larger type and a larger size for elderly people, Caldwell said.
There is no keyboard or logging onto the Internet, two of the biggest bugbears for seniors, their research found. There are four response buttons in the form of emojis, a happy and a sad face, a heart and a thumbs up.
The Kitcal tablet receives messages, photographs and videos and has a calendar display in which family members can remotely set events and reminders.
To communicate with the tablet family and friends download the free Kitcal Companion app. Kitcal stands for ‘‘keep in touch calendar’’.
‘‘It does need a family who are going to stay engaged and send things through, otherwise it’s not going to engage the person because that’s what they need,’’ Caldwell said. ‘‘I always thought that I would be sending my mum just photos of a flower that came out this morning, or little things, like the cat doing something silly, just day to day stuff that I would send to other people, and they would send to me, and just keeping them in the loop of those funny little things really.’’
Caldwell said seniors would like the ‘‘check in’’ function, a short-cut to messaging that gives peace of mind to family.
No setting up is needed. With a pre-installed Vodafone SIM card the tablet is ready to go straight out of the box.