[goodcow]

I've been tutoring my co-worker's 92 year old father on his new eMac once a week, and I have a few questions about things that will help make it easier for him to use.

First of all, we switched him from the standard Apple mouse to a three button USB mouse because it was easier for him to work with, but he doesn't really grasp the idea of only using the left click button, and gets into into trouble by right clicking on things. He actually managed to delete the System Preferences, forcing me to reinstall OSX, but that's a whole different story. (why are you even allowed to delete System Preferences?)

So, is there a way to disable the middle and right mouse buttons, or set them to act like the left button? The system preferences mouse tab didn't seem to be of much help.

Also, is there a way to just make all the operating system text bigger, without using the magnification hotkeys to enlarge the whole screen? Not only is that too difficult for him to do, but he's using one of those "Big Keys" keyboards without any of the Apple keys. Something like the Windows display properties, appearance tab, with the different presets.

After deleting System Preferences I also locked him down as root, so all he can do now is open Safari, TextEdit, Chess, and Solitare.

Thanks in advance.

[jmonty12]

You might see if there is a Macintosh driver for the new mouse and, if after installing it, you might be able to turn off those extra buttons. I recently did something similar for my 78 year old father (disabling all but one button) but this was on an PC.

Related to this, how is your father doing with the mouse? My father has arthritis, and clicking the mouse without moving the pointer was very difficult for him. Because of this I replaced his mouse with a trackball. This allows him to position the mouse, let go of the trackball part, and then click separately. He was much happier with this, but the trackball had several buttons on it and I found that I needed to disable them in order to prevent problems like you've described. This whole experience taught me that I needed to expore options for my father that I would not want for myself (in this case, a trackball.)

I don't have my Mac in front of me right now, but I know there are several options under preferences to help screen readability. You may find that changing the screen to monochrome, or reverse video, migth help. What you might find unacceptable for your own use might end up being just what he needs.

[Turias]

Yeah, as the person above said, find the mouse drivers for whatever mouse you have.

As for increasing the text size without magnifying the screen, I think that needs to be done on a per-application basis. For example, in the Safari preferences, you can set the minimum font size.

[Chimpmaster]

If you are running OSX, you really should set up a simple account for him with simple finder preferences only, and edit rights for system preferences and applications removed.

Its really easy to do and would save you a lot of pain.

As for the mouse, it will depend on the type of mouse and drivers available. Certainly with logitech mice you will be able to do this as a general rule, and I suspect the same for microsoft and kensington also.

This is dependent on the software that drives the mouse though, as mac osx is designed by default to run on a single button apple mouse.