Re: Verizon's new UI unreadable to baby boomers?

On Wed, 12 Jul 2006 08:09:57 -0600, Notan
<notan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

crop_circles wrote:

Whats up with Verizon's new phones?
They all have the same user interface with a very tiny unreadable,
unchangable font. Since every human on the planet starts loosing their close
up vision at around age 43, why agravate the issue?
I imagine a huge number of Verizon's customer base is over 40. Won't they
just go to another provider?

Maybe someone will come out with a baby boomer phone... Unlike today's phones,
which are being built with kids in mind, it'll have large buttons, a readable
font, and adequate earpiece volume.

Getting older really does suck! <g>

Notan

Case in point - me:

Excellent vision for most of my life. At the age of 39, I actually
tested 20-10, meaning what the average person could read at 10 feet, I
could at 20 feet.

Age 41 - started needing glasses to read, sometimes.

Age 44 - neeed glasses to read all of the time, but still had
excellent distance vision.

Age 48 - distance at which I needed correction began to increase, but
at great distances still saw stuff just fine. Started wearing
graduated lenses, all of the time.

I became progressiviely worse over the years, and now at age 55 I not
only need glasses for distance and reading, my driver's license now
demands that I wear them all of the time while driving, and it's a
good thing, too, because I can't read road signs as easy anymore. They
come up too fast and I don't focus quickly enough.

Not everyone has the same deterioration of vision, so comparing one's
self to another just creates an irresolveable problem that leads to a
flame war, as it did here. For most "normal" folk, though, age leads
to a hardening of the lens that results in deterioration of close
vision forst, and like myself, deterioration is progressive.

The fact is, I can't read my verizon GUI, or the keypad for that
matter, without my glasses, and getting it a distance away where I can
sort of get the thing in focus (which is way more than arm's length at
this point) reduces to type to a point where it is way too small to
read anyway.

Think it won't happen to you? Think again. And if you've had vision
problems throughout your life, expect them to get way worse.
.

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