Clarity have just released a friendly new mobile phone designed to be easy-to-use by seniors. This ‘unlocked’ GSM phone will work on AT&T and T-Mobile networks. So if you are looking for a mobile phone for a senior in your extended family include this in your research. Here’s a picture:

ClarityLife Cellphone Front (left image) and Back (right image) showing simple buttons!

The CarityLife C900 features include:

• Larger buttons.
• A one-touch emergency button on the back of the phone. Press this and the phone will keep dialing and texting five numbers until someone answers!
• An easy-to-use dial pad with very readable buttons slides out from the underside, I don’t have a picture of this, but one is included in the their spec sheet.

Clarity is (a division of Plantronics) is the leading supplier of amplified telephones, notification systems, assistive listening devices and other communications devices for the Hard of Hearing and Deaf communities.

Busy families, and in particular Moms, use computers to keep in touch, share photos, and do web research. If only grandparents were online it would be so much simpler! But many seniors find computers hard to use and families who try to help their seniors have a difficult time. As one of our customers said …

“Giving tech support to your Mom in Kansas is just too hard” - Jim

How BigScreenLive works
BigScreenLive solves the ‘Internet for Seniors’ problem by providing easy-to-use software which installs on most Windows computers. The key to BigScreenLive is that once it is running it takes over the whole computer screen. Seniors will not get into trouble by clicking outside the browser window, clicking on the task bar, see popup adverts, or be exposed to phishing scams. They will be working in a safe environment.

Getting your senior online
A family member can set up a free trial BigScreenLive account for a senior. Then they can help the senior download the software and get it installed. If your senior lives in another part of the country we recommend you purchase the ‘BigScreenLive to Go’ stick drive which is just $12.95. Once a senior puts the BigScreenLive to Go stick drive into their computer the installation is automatic. Learn more about BigScreenLive to Go here.

Senior members get an email address and use the BigScreenLive software. Family members get free accounts (but no email address) and can sign into the BigScreenLive Family and Friends Portal to place photos, web bookmarks, and addresses into the senior’s account.

Success tip: Get your extended family involved!
Once you have your senior set up, they can invite as many family members as they want to get free accounts for the Friends and Family portal - we only charge for senior memberships. The key to making your senior successful is to get your family involved in sending them emails, sharing photos, providing bookmarks, and contacts. After a short time your senior will be using simple email, easy picture sharing, reading online news, and surfing the Internet for seniors on their own.

How to get started
Take a look at our video, or check out our product overview. Try out BigScreenLive free for 30 days with no obligation to purchase by clicking here. We’re confident that at the end of the trial you’ll want to continue the service for your senior and decide to pay the low senior membership fee of $9.95 per month to continue the service.

Computers are making it easier for us to do many things. In fact they are replacing things we used to take for granted - letter writing, newspapers, and picture albums. The trouble is computers are hard to use.

We understand many seniors just want an easy-to-use computer. We don’t make computers, but we do make special software designed to turn a PC into an easy-to-use ’senior computer’. BigScreenLive will have you using simple email, easy picture sharing, looking at online news, and doing many other things easily and safely. Here are some of the things BigScreenLive will make it easy for you to do:

Email: These days everyone is using email. BigScreenLive provides easy-to-use simple email by giving you just the features you really need. Emails are displayed in clear text. We block ‘spam’ and viruses to keep you safe.

Address Book: We provide a simple address book to keep track of names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses.

Photos: We provide a place for you to keep the digital pictures people send you, and easy picture sharing with your friends and family.

News: We give you the latest news from national and local newspapers with enlarged text for easy reading.

Internet: Safely ‘surf’ the Internet, without any popup windows or tricks.

Shopping: We provide a safe and secure way to look for gifts and shop online.

Games: We have a selection of great games including Sudoku, Poker, Solitaire, Chinese Checkers, and many others.

We invite you to click here to watch our video and see how we solve the Internet for seniors.

If you like what you see, you can get started by getting our free software and trying it out for a month. There is no obligation to purchase. After the free month when you are sure BigScreenLive is the senior computer solution for you, you can choose to give us payment information and become a member. Annual membership costs as little as $9.95 per month.

Try BigScreenLive out free for 30 days with no obligation to purchase. Click here to get our free trial software. You can be using simple email and easy picture sharing today!

At BigScreenLive we are focused on making the Internet for seniors as easy as it can be. In using any new online product there is a path that the user has to follow in order to learn about the product, get it installed and set up, and then start using it. I think of this as being like a hurdle race - each step in the process is a hurdle. Our job is to eliminate unnecessary hurdles and to make sure the hurdles we do have are kept low. In the recent Olympics it was fun to watch the hurdle races, its amazing to see athletes competing at that level. What we want is to make sure we don’t have our users failing on any hurdles - like the athlete below, who without doubt is world-class but had something go wrong on this race.

When it all goes wrong - users fall on hurdles

What we want is to have our hurdles cleared easily. An inspiration in this is Bert Morrow who is the oldest hurdler in history seen below at 88 in the year 2000. See Ken Stone’s article at Mastertrack.com.

When it goes right - users clear hurdles

If you see problems in our signup process, or when you get started using BigScreenLive, please send us an email to let us know about it so we can work on that particular hurdle!
- Richard Mander, CEO

We’ve recently had the privilege of working with Elderhealth Northwest to set up BigScreenLive with their residents at Gaffney House. Gaffney House offers an innovative “Supported Living” program for people with memory loss or other health conditions who don’t want to leave their homes for an institutional setting and who need more personal attention than can be found in a typical large-scale facility. BigScreenLive provided a Hewlett-Packard ‘thin client’ PC with a touchscreen to provide Gaffney with an integrated solution. The touchscreen is especially useful because people can navigate the interface and explore their family pictures and emails simply by touching the screen - mousing is only needed when text editing. As a result people who have trouble using a mouse due to arthritis or other mental or motor challenges are able to easily move around the screen simply by touching what they want to do next.
Family members get free ‘friends and family’ memberships to BigScreenLive once they are invited by the Senior Member. Gaffney families have been able to upload family photos, web bookmarks, and contacts for their seniors to view. Staff at Gaffney can publish information on the Gaffney portal in BigScreenLive - so family members can see pictures of Gaffney events, and even look at the schedule and upcoming menus their seniors will be enjoying. BigScreenLive has enabled families to keep connected even though some are separated by great distances. It is heart warming to see seniors engaging with this technology and keeping in touch with their families.