Buying a new phone - Amy

One day you hear about a new phone that you love the sound of. It has all these amazing apps and features and you can't wait to get one. You save up, and eventually you have enough money to buy it. You go into town one day and buy it. As soon as you get home you set it up and start playing with it. Easy right? Not so easy when you've got a sight problem.

Here's how it really goes...

You don't want a new phone because there's a cool, new one out. You want a new phone because you need one, so that everybody knows you are safe when you are out on your own. You hear about all these new gadgets and phones, but none of them really matter because you probably can't see them or read them properly anyway.

One day you decide you need a new phone and you go to the phone shop. You need a phone shop where you can actually play on the phones, not just look at a dead one hung on a wall.

When you're looking through the phones they all look the same these days, they are all just a screen. You find a screen you like the look of and you start to play around on it. The first place you go to is the settings icon, and then accessibility. That's if you can read the phone to get that far. My Mum had to do that bit for me and change the colours so that I could read it.

I looked through all the accessibility options, the font type, the font size, the colours and themes you could change the phone to, to make sure I can actually read it. People with worse sight than me would find out what speaking options there are, if your phone will read the text to you, and if you can give verbal instructions to your phone.

You're not going to waste your money on a phone if you don't know you can actually use it. These are the things it doesn't tell you on the phone description or specifications. These are the things partially sighted and blind people need to know. Then you might move onto all the fancy things. The things that some sighted people take for granted.

You also need to be able to get to the phone shop in the first place. This brings on a whole new challenge...

Help with smartphones and tablets

A note from SRSB

If you are reading this and understand some of the comments that Amy has made, please note that we have been holding regular O2 Guru Days and there is another coming up on 28 March 2017 at SRSB.

We also hold ongoing Online Today courses with the next one happening on 27 February 2017 at SRSB.

Both of these courses are designed to help you with exactly these sort of issues. If you are interested in either, please contact us on 0114 272 2757 to book your place.