Hi all,
This is my first post and I’ve joined because my father-in-law, Tom, has Parkinson’s (he is currently in hospital with aspiration pneumonia) and I’ve seen him struggle over the years with many things that both frustrate me and make feel thankful for my own good health.
Tom has always be a very sociable chap and keeping in touch with friends and family is extremely important to him. He had a laptop which he used a lot but that eventually proved too difficult for him to use and so he then bought an iPad. He now has difficulty using the keyboard and even the touch screen due to tremors and being somewhat unsteady.
I assumed there would be lots of advice on using iPads for sufferers of Parkinson’s (& other conditions) but after a fair bit of research I found very little. I joined the Reddit forum to find out if there were Siri shortcuts (Siri is a virtual assistant that you can call up by saying “Hey Siri” and Siri Shortcuts deliver a quick way to get things done with your apps with just a tap or by asking Siri. The Shortcuts app enables you to create personal shortcuts with multiple steps from your favorite apps. Start from hundreds of examples in the Gallery or drag and drop to create your own). I even created a spec for a Shortcut that I thought would be useful but I was advised that the integration between Siri and some of the apps (Apple’s native Mail app especially) wasn’t quite there.
Anyway after a bit of further research I remembered that in Apple’s latest software update (iOS 13 which was released last September) for iPads/iPhones they added Voice Control under Settings, Accessibility. With this switched on (it can be turned on an off manually or by asking “Hey Siri, turn Voice Control on/off”. When the download is complete, a microphone will appear in the status bar of your device that indicates that Voice Control is listening or not listening.) you can literally control your iPad/IPhone with voice commands to do just about anything that you could do by touch: launching apps, adjusting volume, editing text, rebooting your iPhone or iPad, and many more commands, you can do a great deal just with your voice in iOS 13.
I don’t know if this widely know but I thought I’d mention it anyway. I will be playing around with this to understand how it might help Tom for when he’s out of hospital.
Link to Apple’s own article
Regards
Seán
