Dear LPG, 

I see myself as a pensioner who has a little in common with the kids.  I have and use my tech quite a bit and even though I forget to keep my smart phone charged at times, as oldies go, my grandchildren tell me that in comparison with some of the other members of my generation of the family, I am the one that is most likely to respond when one of them phones me or leaves me an email or text.  

But things are evening up, and more of my friend’s and older family members are buying and using tablets and smart phones these days.  I think that there is something to be said about being able to see the people that you are talking to no matter what part of the world they live in.  Being so board that finding the time to work out how to use our technology has to be one of the few positives that came out of finding ourselves locked down for the first part of the 2020s. 

But there is one aspect of having a computer, tablet, or mobile smartphone that I think might need to be brought to the attention of us oldies.  I have found lately that the size of the lettering can be a bit of a problem.  

I didn’t notice but I started to find myself bringing the phone nearer to my face in order to focus more easily and my grandson, who visited me one day recently mentioned it.  Now that it has been pointed out to me I see many of the people around me doing the same thing, but it is not always obvious while you are busy reading your messages.   

Laptops and computers are stuck on the table and we tend to work at focussing from a greater distance, but tablets and smart phones are different.  I asked Google and more than one site I read informs that, for the sake of your eyes, it is best not to be reading any electronic screen when it is any closer to your eyes than 18 inches.   

You will not notice what you are doing when looking at your more portable tech, but if you have a friend who habitually holds theirs a lot closer to their nose than that, perhaps it would be worth sharing that fact. 

It is not all bad news though, by now the people who make these things have thought of just about everything, and making the lettering a bit bigger is such an obvious answer to such an obvious problem 

That same grandson showed me something that perhaps other older electronic device users might benefit from knowing and that is how to make the lettering (font) bigger, and I learned that you can do this on computers and laptops too and even change style and the colour of the text. I have to be honest, he just did it for me but I have found some instructions that my fellow readers might benefit from if they have no one else to ask. 

For many readers this will be really basic information but I hope that there will be a few who benefit from what I have written. 

NS, Beckenham 

NS shares what she has found…

(►►►)   (►►►)     (►►►)   

(►►►)     (►►►)