iCare Update for Headingley Guru Rebekah Brett

Our stores regularly do events for the visually impaired ranging from Worksop to Scarborough.

The event that I attended was at Swatch Moore College in Leeds City Centre. At the event there were a few other companies that either made technology to help with various aspect of peoples lives or just gave general advice. Our main focus was to help visually impaired customers or even family and friends of people with visually impairments use technology; mainly mobile phones and tablets. 

It was a busy day and the people we did help were very grateful of the service that we gave them. My favourite part of the event was when one lady came in on the off chance that there was someone there who could teach her to use her smart phone. At that time, she had one buttoned Nokia phone and an Alcatel touch screen phone; she also carried around a large magnifier glass which was about 30cm wide. She carried it round with her to enlarge text on documents that she was trying to read. She was scared to use her smart phone because she didn't think that the text and apps would be large enough for her to see.

Me and Jordan (the other guru who currently works at Crossgates) showed her some features of the phone through accessibility; mainly the zoom features, which if you triple tap the screen it creates a window to zoom into the screen. We also downloaded other apps like tap tap see where you can take a picture and the app will describe to you what is within the picture. Another app was a magnifier which uses your back camera and allows you to zoom in very far. 

The lady was so grateful of what we had showed her, meaning that she wouldn't have to carry around the massive magnifying glass and her old phone, she couldn't thank us enough saying that we've had changed her life. I was so overwhelmed being able to help someone who had been visually impaired for a while and had very minimal knowledge of how technology could help her. We get a few people every now and again coming into the store with visual impairment however it was a really nice experience to visit one of these events and I hope to be visiting more in the future.

We have a wide variety of App video reviews along with hints and tips on how to get the most from your smartphones - please click here to view the iCare Videos